The Past Revisited
by Botticelli50
Summary: The events recorded in Harry's secret diaries come back to haunt him. Under house arrest and threatened with prison or worse it is up to the members of his team to unearth his involvement in black operations in Northern Ireland and clear his name.
1. Chapter 1

_**THE PAST REVISITED**_

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**_Despite the credibility gap of imagining that the Greek God that was Peter Firth in his 20's would have successfully blended in in undercover operations in Northern Ireland in the late 1970's I have nonetheless decided to base this new fanfiction on that period. I started this fic back at the beginning of August when I envisaged that the inclusion of references to Harry's Diary was foolish and would only result in an extensive re-write when the 'genuine article' came out a few weeks later. As it has transpired however the published Diary does not contain much information on the time of the Troubles and certainly does not include nearly enough later references to Harry's thoughts on Ruth (IMHO) so I have no qualms in retaining my version of certain extracts & hope they won't irritate too many fans of the Diary. The usual disclaimer that none of this has the slightest bearing on the original characters created by the Spooks team of course applies as usual._**

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**_THE GRID_**

Harry's eyes softened as he watched Ruth ploughing her way through endless paperwork – was the job so onerous or was it just that like him she had nowhere better to go? So near and yet so far. He judged that it would only take six paces and an ocean of courage to cross the floor and tell her how he really felt; but of course he wouldn't. Caution, the better part of valour, he consoled himself bitterly. Sometimes he caught her bewitching gaze directed at him and thought for a fleeting moment that he saw something of the same desire and longing that burned as a dull ache inside himself, but then dismissed the idea as fanciful. Ruth was younger, much younger than him; she was beautiful, highly intelligent and open-hearted. Despite the opportunities afforded to him he had not sought to investigate her private life beyond the initial vetting when she joined the department and for all he know she could already have someone special in her life; although somehow he doubted it. No one with someone waiting for them would spend every possible waking hour chained to their work desk. Still she could have someone and even if she didn't, how could he think that she would be interested in him? – imagine the embarrassment if he propositioned her and she rejected him. Harry shook himself out of his daydream and pulled on his overcoat.

"Don't you have a home to go to?"

"I'm a workaholic made in my boss's image."

"Well even workaholics have to sleep occasionally Ruth. I'll give you a lift home."

Ruth glanced at her watch which showed 10.37 pm.

"No, don't worry Harry, I'm fine. The buses run until 11.40. I've got heaps of time."

Harry appeared unconvinced by this argument as he came round to the side of her desk and lifted her coat off the back of her chair.

"I'm not happy with you hanging around bus stops on your own late at night. Come on, it's only a few miles out of my way."

"Harry I'll be fine I often catch the last bus."

Harry snorted with exasperation

"Don't be so bloody stubborn. Put your coat on. That's an order not a request."

Ruth was determined not to be steam-rollered by Harry.

"What will people think if we're seen leaving the building and driving off together?"

"For God's sake Ruth what does it matter? I'm offering you a lift not a proposal of marriage."

A tense, embarrassed silence fell between them and both avoided catching the eye of the other in case their feelings should be betrayed. A clearly flustered Ruth grabbed her coat and Harry stood back to give her room and watched mutely as she hastily crammed a pre-packaged Pret-a-Manger salad and smoothie back into her bag that had obviously been intended as a dinner substitute. He was guiding her towards the pods whilst weighing up the likelihood of her saying yes if he suggested they might find dinner somewhere enroute when his mobile phone rang. Harry pulled it impatiently out of his pocket intending to silence it, when the name flashed up on the screen made him pause.

"Excuse he one moment Ruth, I need to take this."

Harry turned abruptly and went back into his office, shutting the door behind him. Ruth waited anxiously. It was not like Harry to be secretive in front of her. This was either something very serious and personal or possibly both. Ruth could see through the glass partition that Harry's face was troubled and his unconscious gesticulations indicated that he was arguing with whoever was ringing him. After what seemed like an eternity but was in reality about 3 minutes, Harry closed his phone and sitting on the edge of his desk rubbed his hand slowly across the lower part of his face, pinching his full lips between his forefinger and thumb. Ruth could not stand the suspense any longer and she cautiously drew open his door and took one step inside the room.

"Er Harry, please tell me to go away if that's what you want but you appear to have had some bad news."

Harry looked up at her and smiled very slightly.

"You could say that Ruth. That was a friendly face from the JIC – apparently evidence has been submitted to the DG that proves I colluded in the execution of republican prisoners and suspects whilst I was in Northern Ireland."

Ruth looked indignant

"That's just ridiculous Harry."

"Well obviously not that ridiculous. My contact rang to warn me that I am suspended forthwith pending investigations and I will be either under de facto house arrest or possibly even detention."

Ruth stared at him too horrified to speak so that Harry in something of a role reversal felt the need to reassure her.

"Don't worry. I'm sure it will be sorted out, but in the meantime Ruth I would be grateful if you could look after a few items for me."

Here Harry reached down and unlocking a drawer, brought out three small leather-bound books which he put on the desk. He then felt in his jacket pocket and brought out a slim address book. As he did so a small passport-sized photo slipped out from between its pages and fell on the floor. Harry reached down quickly to retrieve it but Ruth was swifter. Her fingers reaching to close over the small item were covered momentarily by Harry's hand. She blushed deeply as she felt the warmth of his skin touching hers but held onto her prize. Turning over the photo Ruth confirmed her initial suspicion – it was the same photo she had submitted with her transfer application from GCHQ. Without looking at him she silently placed it on his desk where it lay, a legerdemain revelation of undeclared feelings, demanding explanations that would not be forthcoming. Now it was Harry's turn to be embarrassed and he hurriedly gathered the books together and held them out to Ruth.

"Please feel free to say no Ruth, but I would be very grateful if you could hold onto these until this matter is resolved. The goons will be going over my house and this office with a fine toothcomb and I'd rather keep these confidential."

"Of course Harry."

Ruth deliberately blocking the view of the CCTV camera, reached out and manoeuvred her cellophane dinner round in her bag to make room for the additions. She was not so preoccupied however that she was prevented from observing Harry slip her photo back into his jacket at the same time as placing four identical items on his desk to replace those that she had taken. A shadow of a smile lingered at the corners of her mouth – the photo had patently not been in his address book by accident.

"Please tell Adam I don't know the details of the case against me but it's got to be pretty watertight or they would not have taken it this far. I need him to make some discreet enquiries but I don't want him to stick his neck out for me and I certainly don't want him dragging the rest of the team into this mess. If I am going down on this I don't want the whole department compromised – do you understand?"

Here Harry gripped Ruth by the shoulders and looked sternly into her eyes. She responded by nodding wordlessly.

" Tell him I may not have the opportunity to go dog walking so direct communications may be impossible. There's a man called Jerry Hanley, he was living in Brussels the last time I heard of him; he was part of my team of agents back in '78 and he's one of the few to have survived, he'll be a useful character witness."

Harry snorted at the irony of his position

"Probably the only one I'm likely to be able to produce from that time so I hope he's still the right side of the pearly gates."

"Why Harry?

"Why did my agents drop like flies? I'm afraid it was in the nature of the work."

"No, why would someone want to go to these lengths to get rid of you?"

Harry smiled ironically

"If I knew that then I'd have a better idea of how to challenge this. I'm afraid it's in the nature of my job to make enemies Ruth. It could be anyone of several dozen individuals. My records from Northern Ireland are easily accessible for those who know where to look, it doesn't necessarily have to be someone from that time and place."

AT that moment the pod doors opened and two burly men stepped onto the Grid. Ruth's face registered panic and anxiety as she stepped nearer to Harry and placing her hand on his arm squeezed reassuringly.

"Harry, are you going to be alright?"

He stood up and moving towards the door and out of the direct view of the men advancing towards his office he drew her close to him and whispered in her ear

"I'll be fine Ruth, I've got a guardian angel watching over me haven't I?"

The men appeared at the doorway and the older of the two addressed Harry

"I'm sorry Mr Pearce, but we have orders to escort you home pending an investigation of a charge that has been levelled against you."

Harry nodded his assent and watched as the second man emptied the contents of Harry's desk into a sack, including the four books sitting on the top and then as an after-thought also emptied the waste-paper basket in as well.

Harry sighed in exasperation

"Do you want to strip search me in front of my staff or does that humiliation come later?"

"Please Mr Pearce, don't make this any more difficult than it has to be. You know as well as I do that certain procedures have to be followed."

"Oh, like habeas corpus I suppose?"

Harry's irony was lost on the Service official who gestured to him to leave the room.

Ruth opened her mouth to protest but Harry frowned her a warning to keep silent and she watched dumbly as he was led through the pods: a stocky, immaculately dressed figure, flanked by the two officials. As he disappeared from sight four other men arrived on the Grid and started to dismantle Harry's computer and rifle through the drawers and desks on the Grid. Ruth protested that they had no right to touch confidential files but they ignored her and indicated very forcibly that her presence was not required. She hurried out of the building and speed dialled

"Hello Adam, it's Ruth. You've got to come to Thames House now. Harry's been arrested on suspicion of ordering the execution of Republicans during his time in Northern Ireland and there are plods crawling all over the Grid looking at everything. Well, I don't know on what basis, but Harry got a tip off and he seemed to think the evidence could be quite damning. Ok, I'll see you in fifteen minutes. I'll wait at Luigi's, you know, the café around the corner by the bus stop, it stays open late."

**Luigi's**

Ruth waited anxiously in the café, a cup of coffee cooling untouched in front of her. Images of Harry being virtually man-handled through the pods blended with the sensation of desire that his hand touching hers and his body standing so close to hers had aroused. When he had briefly drawn her close to him his head had rested against hers and his lips brushed her ear. Such a proximity brought to mind that time in the corridor when in the heat of the moment he had roughly grabbed her, slammed her against the wall and demanded that she accept his view that she should be triumphant at her success in manipulating Angela. Even now she could vividly recall the sensation of his hands gripping her arms, the passion in his voice, the overwhelming desire that he would forget himself just for a fraction of a second and kiss her- _carpe diem –_ he was fond of Latin sayings, if only he had put that one into action and demonstrated his impassioned argument with a gesture of physical intimacy. Ruth closed her eyes as waves of anxiety and desire swept through her mind.

"Ruth?"

She immediately looked up to meet the cool steady gaze of concern in the eyes of the tall figure standing by her chair. She gestured to him to sit down.

"I'm fine Adam, just a little tired. Sit down, I think it's better we talk outside of Thames House."

Adam responded by drawing a chair round so that he sat adjacent to her.

"Fine by me – more coffee house than dog house then."

Ruth smiled weakly at his attempt at humour.

"That joke's so feeble it's worthy of Harry's efforts."

At the mention of his name Ruth's levity vanished and her expression was sad and troubled.

"It was awful Adam."

"Tell me what happened, exactly."

"Well we were both preparing to leave the Grid, er, it was about 10.40 as Harry offered me a lift home and I said I still had another hour to the last bus. Anyway his phone rang and he took the call in his office. I could see he was angry with someone, after which he told me he was going to be detained because of accusations of executing IRA suspects and prisoners that had been put before the DG. Then two Special Branch officers arrived and took him away – as far as I know back to his house."

"Who rang him Ruth?"

"I'm not sure, he just said a friend from the JIC."

"Did he suggest who might be behind this?"

"No, he said it could be any number of people but he said I was to tell you to find a man in Brussels called Jerry Hanley who was one of the agents he was running at the time but that you were not to put your neck out over it and not to involve the rest of the team. I'm worried Adam, really worried. It wasn't at all like Harry, he seemed resigned that he wouldn't survive this, he was taking of not compromising the team because you would need to keep going if the worst happened."

Adam smiled reassuringly at Ruth but his eyes were troubled.

"Harry's a tough old dog, don't write him off just yet. Did he give you no other indication of what the evidence against him is likely to be?"

"No, nothing."

Ruth had already decided to keep the diaries confidential, for she was convinced that's what those leather-bound volumes were: a private, potentially explosive account of Harry's experiences in MI5 over the past 30 years. She remembered all-too-vividly what had happened to Harry's close friend and mentor Clive McTaggert when his diaries had come to light and she was determined to avoid anyone knowing of the existence of Harry's version of events he had witnessed and taken part in.

"And are there still goons tramping all over the Grid?"

"I'm not sure, they were there when I left and they were going through everthing."

"Right, well that's the first thing to put a stop to. I'll go and get them off our backs and call Juliet, although I'm sure she's already been informed and no doubt will be safely ensconced in Harry's office by first thing tomorrow morning. You go and check up if Harry has been taken home or not but be discreet Ruth. We don't want to be seen to make direct contact, he will have been formally suspended and officially we are not meant to go anywhere near him."

Ruth was grateful that Adam didn't want her to go back into Thames House, as she was anxious to deposit Harry's books somewhere safe before she was searched by some over-zealous Special Branch officer.

"What are we going to do Adam?"

"Well obviously we have to find out precisely what the charges are, who's provided the evidence and why and check up how much of it is verifiable; but we're going to have to run this as a parallel op to normal Grid work. If Juliet gets so much as a sniff of us investigating she will be putting all our heads on the block."

Ruth thought she already knew the answer to her next question but she felt duty-bound to make it.

"Harry said that you were not to take risks Adam and not involve the rest of the team so I presume it's going to be just you and I?"

Adam smiled broadly at her

"Since when have you known me take any notice of Harry where his welfare is concerned? Besides which if Harry is proved to be guilty as charged and removed from his post then the whole department is vulnerable to attack regardless of whether we stand on the sidelines and wring our hands or actually get off our butts and try and do something about it. Anyway regardless of Harry's instructions we need all hands on deck to get to the bottom of this, but strictly beneath the radar. I'll contact the others to meet at my flat at 1.00 am. We need to thrash out a plan of action before tomorrow morning."

He rose from the table.

"Remember Ruth, be cautious and check you're not followed. We have to presume that whoever is behind this may be operating from within the Service and have access to surveillance, they may even possibly work within 5."

Ruth nodded her acquisition but she was still determined to do anything necessary to check up on Harry or at least to reassure herself that he wasn't being beaten up in some holding cell. Seeing her normal bus pulling up she ran out and jumped on board just as it was pulling away. Flushed but triumphant she flopped into a seat – just like all the classic spy films, jumping onto a moving bus to avoid being tailed. Secure that she was being followed she made her way up to the top deck and with trembling hands brought out one of Harry's leather bound books. It seemed madness for him to have kept them in his office, but then perhaps he felt they were more secure there than in his own home, especially after the burglary he had experienced which had exposed the limitations of his supposedly advanced security system. It still seemed inexplicably rash however, to keep such a potential time-bomb sitting in the middle of the lion's den so to speak. It was indicative of Harry's chutzpah or indeed equally his bone-headed impulsiveness to have taken such a risk.

She didn't intend to abuse his trust by reading the diaries cover to cover (despite a burning curiosity to know whether he had mentioned her or not ) but she did need to establish whether any part referred to the period of time he was in Northern Ireland, for in that case she was determined to utilise any information contained there in her own private investigation that she was resolved to carry on separate from the activities of the rest of the team and of course parallel to official Grid activity – it was going to be a complex few days! The first volume she opened had dates starting at 2002 and was unfinished – this was obviously the most recent chronologically and she reluctantly closed it. What was contained inside? Their first meeting? – when she had as usual made an absolute fool of herself, stammering and gabbling and dropping files everywhere. She had been nervous and flustered to begin with, arriving late and having the whole team waiting for her; but then one glance at those warm hazel eyes and the sound of his mellifluous , sensual voice and she had been completely lost. Pole-axed. Love at first sight? A romantic nonsense to all rational beings but yet how else to describe his immediate capturing of her heart and mind. She had tried to overcome the attraction, tell herself she was behaving like a love-sick teenager, that it was hopeless, that he had given very little indication that her feelings were in any way reciprocated. She had chased other men, gone on other dates; but nothing could supplant him in her affections. If she could only be convinced that it was totally unrequited, then maybe she could have buried her feelings more successfully, but the constant exchange of looks, the sense of absolute rapport, trust, respect, loyalty – was it all just a successful working relationship? She had once chastised Danny that he didn't appreciate how precious it was to have someone there for you always without question; but of course if she had been honest she would have admitted that she also had that – they had that. Despite the inequality of their positions she and Harry protected, encouraged and supported each other.

Ruth mentally shook herself out of her reverie and placed the book back in her bag in exchange for another. This one was of potentially greater interest, since the first dated entry was from 1977 when Harry would have been 23 and just finishing his recruitment training. The question therefore remained as to what type of diaries these were – no more than glorified filofaxes noting times and dates of meetings or a more explosive revelation of clandestine operations, of personal opinions. Harry had chastised Clive McTaggert as being a fool for keeping a record of his past in the Service and indeed that record was to cost him his life but that did not mean that Harry had not been similarly tempted to recount the extraordinary events of desperate times. He had been a younger and more junior officer then ,with less leverage and experience than he had had since becoming Head of Section D but that did not mean that he had not been party to some black operations nor that he hadn't decided to keep a record of all events as an insurance policy for the future.

Ruth glanced at the first dated entries in the diary written in Harry's careful, precise, neat script. Her heart somersaulted as she visualised a broad rather beautiful hand pausing with a Mont Blanc fountain pen between his fingers, ready to commit his thoughts to paper. Impulsively she raised the book to her lips and softly pressed them against the page. She needed to scan the contents of this volume of the diary as quickly as possible, but it would have to wait until later in the evening, as her bus was reaching the stop that was only yards from her house. Ruth pushed the small black book back into her bag and alighting from the bus hurried up to her front door. She was relieved to see that she had not yet received an uninvited visitor, as her slip of paper was still in place; but she fully expected that once the enquiries were in full swing she would not escape investigation. Given that it was almost midnight she had no option but to hide the diaries in her house for the night, but first thing tomorrow they would have to be moved to a safer location. Ruth shut the curtains and then reaching into the back of one of her over-stocked bookcases brought out two volumes of the collected works of John Ruskin that were old and faded but substantial. She opened them up to reveal hollow interiors which easily accommodated Harry's diaries and address book. She replaced the volumes back to their original location and stacked more paperbacks in front of them. Such a hiding place would not hold out against a full-scale search, but would hopefully be a safe location for one night.

Pausing only to gulp down the by now withered salad and tepid yoghurt that she had brought out of her bag, Ruth snatched her car keys and checking the street to make sure she was not under surveillance she drove off in the direction of Holland Park. It took her only fifteen minutes to get to the discreet expensive line of houses. She drove past Harry's house at a normal speed with a fast beating heart. There were lights on behind closed curtains on the lower floor, but that did not mean that he was necessarily in there. An obvious surveillance car was however parked outside and what looked like several plain clothes officers were loitering in the gated gardens opposite and as Ruth discovered as she made a circuit, there was also one positioned round the back of the house. Surely he must be inside? They wouldn't be paying five officers overtime to watch an empty house? – but she had to be absolutely sure. The adjacent house to Harry's was in darkness and Ruth hit on what she was sure Zaf would refer to as 'a cunning plan'.

She parked her car in an adjacent street and checking for dogs, slipped through a gap in the hedge of the house three doors down that was out of the observational field of the patrolling officer. Slowly and painfully she made her way over walls and through bushes, cursing that she was wearing a long encumbering skirt and that she had not kept up her gym membership. Several minutes later, scratched and dishevelled, she arrived at the top of Harry's garden. Careful to remain in shadow she peaked over the window sill that she judged would be the living room. Fortunately the blind had been drawn down carelessly and one corner had caught on a vase, allowing her a two inch gap through which to look into the room. Harry was in there, sitting back on a couch with his eyes closed, his tie discarded besides him and a half full tumbler of whiskey on the table. A wave of love and concern washed over Ruth and she longed to cradle him in her arms and tell him that she would not let anything happen to him, absurd though that might sound.

Suddenly Harry's eyes opened with an alert expression and his hand reached up and turned off the light. Ruth was disappointed. She would have quite happily crouched there gazing at him for the next hour. She sighed and falling back into the shadow of the shrubbery was about to make her way back over her assault course when without warning a hand grabbed her round the mouth and a strong arm pulled her down.

"What the hell are you doing here" hissed a low soft familiar voice in her ear.

Ruth's heart was pounding so hard from fright she thought she was going to faint.

"Oh God Harry, you've given me heart failure. How did you know I was out here?"

Harry cut through the invitation for an extended explanation.

"Not now. You shouldn't be here, you're no use to me locked up in a police cell."

Ruth was indignant at his lowly opinion of her skills of counter-surveillance and hissed back

"Adam told me to check if you were here. I couldn't be sure unless I actually saw you."

Harry's face softened as he smiled at her in the darkness and whispered back.

"Well you've seen me. I'm fine. I imagine I will be taken in for questioning at some stage but in the mean time I'm under house arrest."

"Oh Harry." Ruth's voice was tearful.

A hand felt for the top of her head and gently stroked down her tangled hair and carefully extracted several dead leaves and bits of thorn bush. Briefly, almost imperceptibly, full warm lips brushed her forehead and he was gone.

Ruth stood momentarily stunned – had she imagined it or had Harry just kissed her – or at least glanced across her skin with his lips? Tentatively she reached up and touched where she still felt the imprint of contact. Perhaps it had been an accident, but she didn't think so and she certainly had not imagined the tender gesture of his stroking her hair. So no great romantic declaration or passionate embrace but something. Ambiguous, deniable, shrouded in darkness; a slight touch in the night that both would remember but probably neither would refer to. Perhaps though another attempt to span the void between feeling and action, thought and declaration, desire and fulfilment.

Ruth glancing over to check the whereabouts of the guard, crawled carefully back through the back gardens and made her way safely to her waiting car. She rang Adam

"The bird is in its cage."

"Good. Well come over to my place as soon as possible, the others are already here."


	2. Chapter 2

_**THE PAST REVISITED**_

_**Chapter 2**_

_**Adam's Flat**_

Ruth cautiously circled round the block, in the chic if anonymous neighbourhood of converted Thameside warehouses. As far as she could ascertain there was no surveillance being kept on the flat and so she parked behind Zaf's sports car that still managed to gleam in the darkness and hurried over to the intercom. Even before she had time to press the button the front door clicked open and Adam beckoned to her from the top of the stairs.

"Come in. Everyone's here except Malcolm, who's up in Birmingham at some geeky convention."

He ushered Ruth inside the door of his flat and prized her coat from her shoulders.

She looked across the open breakfast bar and saw three pale familiar figures huddled together on a long cream sofa. Ruth smiled nervously at them and accepting Adam's offer of a drink, sat down in a nearby armchair. Jo was the first to speak.

"Are you alright Ruth? You look like you've been pulled through a hedge backwards."

Despite her fatigue and anxiety Ruth's smile broadened.

"Well it's funny you should say that…." And she proceeded to recount her progress through the back gardens near Harry's house in the pitch dark."

Adam's eyes narrowed as he placed a glass of red wine in front of her and sat down.

"I thought I told you to stay away from Harry's place?"

"Yes I know, but you also asked me to find out where he is and I couldn't be sure unless I actually looked inside the house. It's alright, I wasn't seen."

Zaf 's eyes shone with amusement at the mental image of Ruth crawling round the salubrious properties of Holland Park in an effort to catch a glimpse of her boss like some demented peeping tom.

"Well I'm sure Harry would approve of his staff down on their hands and knees carrying out counter-surveillance in the good old-fashioned way."

"Well actually he wasn't best pleased."

Adam lent forward and looked at her sharply.

"You mean you spoke to him?"

Ruth blushed at the recollection of the encounter in the dark. She still felt the intimacy of Harry's lips brushing her skin.

"Er yes, my counter-surveillance technique wasn't as good as I thought it was; he caught me red-handed. In fact he nearly gave me heart-failure."

Zaf and Jo exchanged knowing glances at this snippet of information.

Adam pressed Ruth for further details.

"So did Harry have anything new to say?"

"Not really. I only saw him for a few seconds. He said that he was under house arrest for the time being and that he thought it likely that he will be taken in for questioning, but he didn't know when or by whom."

"Well as usual with Harry, he probably knows more than he's letting on. Anyway, as I've said to you all already, this investigation had got be absolutely deep cover. At the moment it's officially Special Branch who are conducting the investigation but we don't know who is behind this or why."

Ros interrupted him.

"Has it crossed your mind by any chance that Harry might actually be guilty of what he's being accused of? In which case this may be a straightforward matter that should be left to the correct authorities to sort out and certainly should not involve us running a clandestine op."

Zaf, ever loyal, turned on her.

"I seem to recall Ros that you're rather keen on clandestine ops and I'm certain that in Harry's case whatever he did or did not do would have been for the good of the Service and the country and not for selfish political or monetary gain."

Adam broke in to forestall Ros's retort.

"This isn't helpful. We can't judge what we should be doing until we have more information as to Harry's activities in Northern Ireland and who has launched this enquiry. Ruth I want you and Malcolm to trace back through all official records for the year that Harry was posted to Belfast. What ops was he involved in both official and black. I want the names of agents that he ran, people he worked with and as far as possible a list of Republican suspects and prisoners that he came in contact with and particularly any that were arrested, disappeared or died during that period as a result of activities that he was connected with. We need to know what evidence there is and perhaps then we might come up with some answers as to why it's being dredged up now."

Ruth creased her brows.

"It's not that straightforward Adam. Most of the military and secret service records from the Troubles are still classified top secret. We wouldn't be able to begin to access then without arousing immediate suspicion."

Adam leaned back on the sofa and sipped his drink.

"Don't sell yourself short Ruth. Harry told me when I first joined the department that there isn't a file in the country that's safe from you. We need to access that information and we need to do so without anyone knowing we've been there."

Ruth sighed and nodded her acceptance of the challenge.

"Right Zaf. I need you and Jo to take a different tack. Find this chap Jerry Hanley that Harry mentioned and also any others who were agents or contacts in the Republican movement who can be linked to him from that time. We've got to build a more accurate picture of what was going on. Someone must still be out there who knows something and the longer we're in the dark over this, the more vulnerable Harry, and by implication the Department, is to attack.

Ros's impatient voice cut across Adam's brief.

"Has it occurred to you to actually just ask Harry outright what he did. I mean if he is this squeaky-clean Sir Galahad of valour and honesty that you all seem to think he is, then he'll just come right out and tell you and save us all a great deal of unnecessary leg work. On the other hand if he was involved in dirty ops and the evidence is still there then it's a pretty pointless task to chase after all those old Republican has-beens."

"_Let he who is without sin cast the first stone". _The slight figure of Malcolm appeared in the doorway and Adam beckoned him across.

"I thought you were at the convention until tomorrow?"

"Yes well even in my cloistered little world there are some things more important than state-of-the-art comms equipment."

Adam turned to Ros.

"Well as Malcolm has so aptly pointed out there are only shades of grey in our profession as you well know Ros, but Harry is one of the good guys. Not Sir Galahad by any means but that rare beast in our line of work, a man of morality and principles and I am not prepared to stand by and watch him being thrown to the wolves by some unknown enemy with a personal agenda. Besides which I cannot see Harry having been involved in cold-blooded executions, at least not without very good reasons. As to a frank and open discussion with him, I hardly think that is a practical option at the moment, Special Branch will have bugged his house and will be watching him closely."

Ruth raised her hand as a gesture of apology as she interrupted him

"Yes, I counted five officers front and rear and there may have been another unit with listening equipment in the park opposite, it was too dark to tell for sure."

Adam continued.

"So until the opportunity arises, if it does, to contact Harry directly, we will carry on our investigation as agreed. I'm going to tackle Juliet first thing in the morning. There isn't a mouse that so much as farts in a corner of Westminster without she knows about it. She must have been forewarned about this arrest and I want to know why she didn't accord the same courtesy to Harry and what more information she has that she's willing to share."

Jo protested

"Surely if you go to Juliet she'll be suspicious that you are trying to defend Harry? I thought we were meant to be keeping this below the radar?"

"She'll be far more suspicious if I didn't. She knows we're all loyal to Harry and she will be expecting us to launch a campaign to support him. I want to feed her a convincing line that we are concerned, but don't know how to respond and are anxious that perhaps he was involved in something illegal in Northern Ireland."

"In which case" interrupted Zaf " perhaps Ros should go. She'd make a far more convincing case for leaving Harry's neck on the block than the rest of us."

Ros glanced disdainfully across at him.

""I bet you were a very keen little scout Zaf; but this is a grown-up world you operate in now, where the figures of authority are not always in the right, no matter how much you give them blind loyalty. I'm not saying that Harry is necessarily guilty of the charges as they stand, just that we should not automatically assume that he is, or rather was, completely innocent."

Ruth could contain herself no longer and blurted out with an impassioned voice

"Harry gave you the benefit of the doubt when most others would have put you in prison and thrown away the key. He would walk through fire to protect his officers and has frequently put his career on the line to defend the department. If you don't feel equal to sticking your neck out for him then fair enough, but don't dare suggest that Harry is anything other than loyal to the Service or would do anything downright criminal."

"Here, here" chirped in Zaf with a triumphant grin on his face. Ros merely raised her eyebrows in mock surprise at Ruth's outburst.

"Unquestioning loyalty: so touching in youth, so naïve in maturity. Even given your infatuation with Harry, I would have expected a more even-handed analysis from you Ruth."

Ruth blushed scarlet at Ros's suggestion that her defence of Harry stemmed from something more that professional regard and opened her mouth to retort. Adam, anxious to avert further exchanges, took control.

"Ros, are you willing to take part in this investigation or not? I made it quite plain on the phone that this is voluntary. If we are discovered it could mean dismissal, even prosecution."

"Of course. I'm here aren't I? Just because I don't subscribe to the 'Harry Pearce is a walking saint' school of thought, doesn't mean I want to see him taken down. He's a fair and able Head of Section and anyway God forbid that you get promoted in his place if we fail.

Adam decided to ignore her attempt to rile him.

"Right, well in that case I want you to trace back 6's involvement in Northern Ireland during the late 1970's. They ran a whole series of clandestine ops over more than a decade which included liquidating key IRA figures.

Jo interrupted

"And we have the nerve to criticise the Americans for Guantanamo."

"Yes well precisely. In fact we were motivated by similar anxieties. The IRA bombing campaigns both in Northern Ireland and on the mainland were spiralling out of control. Internment had failed to curb the level of violence and yet there was too little hard evidence to arrest and put on trial most of the known activists; so the security services employed similar tactics to the CIA with Al Qaeda: identify key suspects, if possible remove them for interrogation and if not ….. " here Adam shrugged his shoulders to indicate a more permanent solution.

"It was of course a black op, no paper trail leading back and everything absolutely deniable. It was actually a classic set up of its kind: key figures in the Republican hierarchy were targeted but the hits were made to look like sectarian executions and for a while even those at the centre of the movement were convinced that it was the responsibility of the UDA or one of the fringe Protestant para-military groups. Of course after a while they cottoned on and in the process a number of Protestant extremists met a painful end. Still as far as 6 was concerned it was a very successful venture and they weren't overly concerned that a few unpleasant Paisley supporters ended up in ditches in Armagh."

Jo looked both horrified and puzzled by what Adam had told her.

"But surely it was MI5 who were responsible for Northern Ireland, I mean as part of Britain it surely came under their remit and not 6's."

"Well yes officially but those were complex times and all areas of the civil and military security forces were involved in Northern Ireland and indeed frequently crossed over the border both into the Republic and figuratively into each other's domain. This particular clandestine op was sanctioned at the highest level in a cross departmental liaison, although the main thrust of the organisation was controlled by 6."

"So you think that Harry might have been part of that operation?"

"Well it's certainly possible. He was there at the right time and he was working closely with military intelligence and probably operatives from 6. The question we have to establish is if Harry was directly involved to the point of being culpable. What I do know is that after the fiasco of the kidnap and death of his friend Bill Crombie Harry was seconded to work for 6 in Germany in the autumn 0f '78. Now that was probably a coincidence of course but we cannot rule out the possibility that he already had some connection with them beyond standard co-operation."

"But that's ridiculous" interceded Zaf. "By that analogy you and I would only be in Section D because we had been involved in some prior secret op."

"Yes quite, but bear in mind that 30 years ago the divide between the sister services was far greater even than it is today; public school boys stroking each other's ties and looking down from on high at the earnest little grammar school boys beavering away at petty domestic problems. 6 scarcely acknowledged the existence of 5 let alone willingly condescended to co-operate."

"Some things never change" muttered Malcolm to himself.

"What we have to establish is whether Harry was already working for them in Northern Ireland and if he was directly involved in the executions. Also don't lose sight of the fact that we also have to find out who is stoking this crisis and why. Why is someone singling out Harry? Is this a personal attack or an attempt to damage the Service? Certainly the last thing anyone wants at the moment is for another scandal of corruption and rogue activities to break to the surface. If, and it is a big if; Harry was part of a liquidation squad, he was one of several dozen involved in an operation that was sanctioned at the highest level so why is he the one against whom charges have been brought? Also, anyone within the Service knows how much shit will hit the fan if this gets out so who wants to rock the boat that much and how many do they want to take down in the process? I myself know of several senior figures who definitely were involved in the executions. How many more are there lurking in the corridors of Vauxhall Cross, Thames House and even Whitehall?"

Zaf spoke up.

"So maybe we've been looking at this from the wrong angle. Maybe it's only incidentally about Harry. If there was such a major black op involving decision makers right up to the top then maybe that's the key. Maybe someone wants to expose the whole murky past and Harry is just a stool pigeon rather than a single target?"

Adam nodded in agreement.

"Yes, that was the first thing that crossed my mind when Ruth told me Harry had been arrested on suspicion of the illegal execution of IRA suspects; but I doubt he was a central figure, certainly not to the extend of providing primary evidence of a large scale black op so why chose him as a stick to beat others? Also there are other factors that make Harry a poor choice to highlight the operation. For example, most of the executions were not carried out in prison, too much evidence. A few were done in the Internment camps yes, but the majority were highly specialist and dangerous ops where the cells were infiltrated by experienced operatives, the key figures identified and then taken out at an opportune moment. No matter how able, Harry was far too young and inexperienced to have been entrusted with such responsibility. He was only 24 when he was posted to Northern Ireland, he had just completed basic training; there's no way he would have been given such an advanced task which required that the agent penetrate into the heart of the IRA without being detected. Besides which," here Adam paused and grinned across at Ruth "if you've seen pictures of Harry in his 20's, he had very distinctive features and a shock of fair curls, hardly the sort of looks with which to blend inconspicuously into an Irish organisation! No, I still think there is a specific and probably a personal element behind Harry being arrested and that will remain the focus of our investigation; but until we come up with a more complete picture of his time over there we're pissing in the dark. So people get busy, we have to know what happened. In the meantime, turn up as usual tomorrow morning, look occupied and pray there are no real emergencies to deal with in the next 48 hours."

The group filed out of Adam's flat and stealthily made their way to their respective cars. As Ruth drove home her mind was whirling with the implications of what Adam had told them. She had heard about the involvement of 6 in summary executions of IRA suspects during the Troubles, but she had not thought to link these with Harry's arrest, as he had been involved in running agents for 5 at the time. Initially her reaction had been that Harry had been wrongly arrested because of false evidence brought by someone who wanted to destroy him and that was still probably the most likely explanation; but now it was also a possibility that Harry had in some shape or form been connected with the secret operation against IRA activists. She was not as convinced as Adam, that Harry's youth and inexperience would have automatically barred him from being included. She had read his personal file and knew that he had been repeatedly commended for his aptitude and cool head in stressful situations. She also knew that he had gone undercover in Northern Ireland at least on low-level recruitment ops when he was expanding his network of agents – that's when Bill Crombie had slipped up and been taken and Harry had been blamed by some for not doing enough to save him. The Harry she knew was a man of conscience and moral rectitude but he was also ruthless and capable of doing anything that was necessary for the good of the country. He had killed as a professional soldier whilst on duty in Northern Ireland, so would it have been such a big step to carry out executions? Particularly as the IRA were self-styled soldiers. Not only did this mean that she would have to acknowledge that the man she loved was capable of cold-blooded murder but also that any attempts to save him would be hampered by the fact that the charges, at least in part, could be true.

_Ruth's House_

The first crucial thing she had to do was to read through the relevant section of his diary for 1978 and see what light, if any, it shed on the whole matter. In this, it appeared that she was to be disappointed, however; for as she approached her house she saw several unmarked cars parked outside the door and the lights on, both upstairs and down. Ruth swore to herself. If these Special Branch officers found the diaries, not only would one of the team's best sources of information be lost, but their contents might well further incriminate Harry. She faced a dilemma. Should she rush in indignant or should she leave her uninvited guests and hope their search was not as thorough as it should be. In the end she did neither, but taking out a key, she slipped into the next door house that she was keeping an eye on for her neighbours whilst they were away in Thailand and picked up the phone.

"Hello, yes, police please. Hello is that the police? I want to report intruders. My neighbour is away and there are several men ransacking her house. I'm frightened to tackle them as I live alone. Could you please send someone as quickly as possible?"

Having given her address, Ruth put the phone down and immediately rang a number on her mobile.

"Hello Gary? Yes I know the time and I know you'll still be up writing. Listen, there are some Special Branch officers turning over my house. No, I can't explain now, but there will eventually be a good scoop in this, believe me. There is about to be a confrontation with the police because I've called them out. Get here in the next 10 minutes and you could have an interesting story on the abuse of a private individual's rights. Just no names or addresses. Ok?"

Next Ruth punched in a short text on her phone:

'Cleaners at my house. Expect them to turn up at yours shortly,' and sent it to the rest of the team.

Ruth only had time to return to her car before two police cars with flashing lights raced along the street, shortly followed by an eager Gary accompanied by a dishevelled-looking female photographer who was still buttoning up her top as she leapt out of the car.

"Glad to see you still take your work home with you Gary" Ruth murmured to herself. The ensuing scene is not difficult to imagine: police shouting at Special Branch officers to come out with their hands up; the officers emerging flashing their cards and telling the police to 'f off' and Gary and his partner gleefully recording the events on still and video until the police and Special Branch realised who they were and then united together to drive off the unwelcome presence of the National Press. Whilst this was all going on, Ruth had parked around the back of her house and made her way through the garden and quietly opened the back door. Checking that all the intruders were involved in the stand-off on her driveway, she hastily retrieved the diaries from their hiding place in the bookcase that had only been partially rifled and retreated as quickly as she could. Once more she felt her heart pounding, as for the second time that night she made her way through a garden in the pitch dark, alert for any sign of security personnel.

"Oh Harry" she whispered to herself "I know you said I was a born spook, but I really don't think I have the nerves for field work."


	3. Chapter 3

_**THE PAST REVISITED**_

_**Interrogation Amongst Friends**_

Adam did not pick up Ruth's text, nor did he know that his flat was being simultaneously searched; because he was on his own private mission.

The house was in darkness when he arrived, but there were still surveillance cars front and rear. Adam went round the back and waited for the officer to break his vigilance. It did not take long. It's surprising how many people lean back and close their eyes when they light up a cigarette and want to savour the first influx of nicotine into the blood stream – it was all Adam needed to vault the gate and make it round to a side window and into Harry's study. Adam moved swiftly through into the hallway and was about to mount the stairs when a sardonic , familiar voice greeted him in the darkness:

"I wondered how long it would take you to get here."

"Is the house bugged?"

"Well not unless my powers of observation are slipping. They've turned the place over and taken my computer and mobile, so they probably think that I'm incommunicado; however let's retreat to the bathroom to be on the safe side."

Harry touched Adam on the elbow and indicated that he should follow him upstairs. Adam's eyes, adjusting to the gloom, could just discern the outline of Harry's broad shoulders, still encased in the formal work shirt he had been wearing that day. Having pulled down the blind, Harry switched on the bathroom light and opened a tap. He gestured to Adam to come in and shut the door behind him. Adam stood leaning against the door whilst Harry perched on the side of the bath.

"I see that unlike poor Ruth, you didn't feel the need to crawl through the local shrubbery."

"I did tell her not to make contact, but she was worried about you."

Harry smiled at the recollection of Ruth's tangled hair and the intensity of desire ignited by the softness of her skin beneath his lips. He hadn't intended to kiss her, but the feel of her hair in his hands and the scent of her perfume on the night air, had evoked an instinctive response. The darkness had provided both a cover and an ambiguity to his action. A gesture across the void of propriety, outside of their normal work environment.

"I take it you're not also here to check up on my welfare?"

"We don't have time to play games Harry. I need to know as much as possible about what went on in Northern Ireland and who you think is behind this move against you."

"It's very kind of you Adam, to try and mount a rescue campaign; but it's too much of a risk for all of you. I can't gamble the future of the Section just to secure my own career. I'm on a limited innings anyway. They will be moving to put me out to pasture in a few years; why jeopardise all your futures for such a small return?"

"That's bollocks Harry and you know it. Never mind a few years down the line; the department needs you now, we need you. Now cut the crap and tell me the real reason why you don't want us digging into your past; otherwise you'll just make our task that much harder because we'll conduct an investigation with or without your approval."

Harry sighed heavily.

"I take it by 'we', you mean the usual suspects?"

"Of course, although Ros is sceptical about the outcome."

Harry smiled his slow, lop-sided smile,

"Well I share her view I'm afraid."

"Stop trying to talk me into the ground and evade the question Harry. Remember I can give you lessons on counter-interrogation techniques. Now how much truth is there in the allegations, who's behind them and what do you think they are going to do?"

Harry pursed his lips and shifted his weight on the lip of the bath.

"I wasn't aware I was being interrogated but leaving that to one side let's tackle those questions in reverse order. My fate is, I think, still undecided or they would have already moved me to some more secure location. They've been very thorough little foot soldiers and searched my house with a fine toothcomb but I presume they haven't found what they were looking for, or at least haven't fabricated enough evidence to either formally charge me or feel safe to remove me more permanently from circulation."

Adam raised his eyebrows at Harry's suggestion

"Do you think whoever is behind this would go that far?"

"Well as I don't know who 'they' are, then yes it has to be a possibility. Collingwood and Meyers were prepared to take such a step, so why not others. If it hadn't been for you and Zaf I would have been nicely barbecued in the detention centre. I don't flatter myself that they were the only two individuals in the country who would like to see me executed."

"And you have no idea who is behind this?"

"I've been sitting downstairs for the past two hours wracking my brains to come up with some answers Adam but quite frankly the list is getting longer rather than shorter and none stand out as obvious suspects. What is certainly odd is dredging up my involvement in Northern Ireland as a basis for an attack on my position. It's so long ago. I was only there for ten months and there are too many people in the Service who want that particular past to remain buried that I cannot think of who would wish to see it resurrected even with the goal of shafting me."

"How much evidence lies buried Harry?

Harry smiled at Adam and met his gaze unflinchingly.

"I take it you are referring to the activities of 6 in the late 70's?"

"What else?"

"It was a difficult time. A great deal of confusion as to who was responsible for what. There was the RUC, the regular Army, Special Forces, Military Intelligence, 5 and 6; all supposedly co-operating; in fact most were leading separate but often overlapping, even rival, operations. I was with Section A of 5 as you know; but I was often called on to liase with a bewildering succession of officers from different organisations; most, if not all of whom, had conflicting agendas. On one op I was seconded to work undercover with a couple of men from military intelligence – it was felt that my recent army experience would help cross-organisational communications – anyway things were going quite hunky-dory, we were information-gathering at a meeting of a Republican splinter group when blow me down, we spotted two other officers from 6 on the other side of the hall. We'd shared office space with them only weeks before at HQ and they'd obviously started their information gathering in our filing cabinets and had decided to join the party – the idiots nearly got us all garrotted."

Adam, getting impatient at being lead down memory lane interrupted:

"So you're saying?"

"So I'm saying there was no clear demarcation point between one service and another, but neither was there a history of willing or successful co-operation. When 6 came up with their new master plan it was never officially announced nor did the military command ,or even 5, know about it. In fact I only learnt the details after I was posted to Germany and met up with one of the officers who had infiltrated the security council of the Provisionals. Of course there were rumours, especially once key figures started to disappear or be found 'executed' sectarian style; it was all too damned convenient, too good to be true if your know what I mean. Not that the Loyalists couldn't be vicious bastards, it's just that they were never that effective. Still no one was sure who was involved and in fact even some in military intelligence (and there's an oxymoron if ever there was one!) either believed or chose to believe that it was actually the UDA who had got lucky."

"But you didn't believe that?"

"Well obviously not; but things being as they were, it was difficult to be sure who was responsible for what. Anyway after the death of Bill Crombie I rather lost it, shouted a few things I shouldn't have at my superiors and got booted over to Europe."

"So you're telling me that you had absolutely nothing to do with any of the executions or undercover work?"

Adam's tone of voice clearly indicated that he thought otherwise.

Harry held up his hand.

"Wait. Let me finish before you call the lynch mob. I was small fry. A junior officer with a taste for trouble who was given the relatively safe mopping up job of controlling and turning the network of agents that had been mishandled under George Blair who had done a Tessa with them. Someone who would be useful to bring back an assessment of the sources and their information but who was expendable if everything went belly up"

"And?"

Harry glanced across at Adam from under heavy eyelids with an alert and piercing expression. He paused and licked his lips as he could be seen weighing up his options. Adam waited patiently for the experienced and cautious spook to reach the conclusion that went against both his instincts and his training: the decision to share secrets. Harry cupped his chin in his right hand and tapped his forefinger against his lips whilst he continued to stare at Adam with narrowed eyes, sizing up the risks attached to each option that he was analysing methodically in his mind. After almost a minute of silence he let out a measured breath.

"Alright. I was involved with 6 in Northern Ireland but only in a very minor way and certainly I was not involved in the liquidations. Simon Cooper had been a bum chum of Jools Siviter's at Eton and he called in a favour when 6 decided to carry out their master plan. He wanted a couple of expendable junior staff to be runners for the deep infiltration golden boys of 6 and Simon decided that Bill and I would nicely fit the profile. We had been on the ground for a few months so we knew how to handle ourselves and to blend in."

Here Adam raised his eyebrows questioningly at Harry who smiled an acknowledgement back

"Yes, well, I had to dye my hair a reddish brown, which did not go down too well on the domestic front. Anyway we were eager to please and honoured to have been singled out to work with the glory boys in deep ops, although no one of course told us that they came from 6."

"Did you know what the grand plan was?"

"Good God no; no one did, not even some of the boys from 6 who infiltrated the Republican cells. It was strictly need-to-know and that definitely did not include us. We were just told that it was an information-gathering exercise to infiltrate into the heart of the Provisionals command structure. Even when dead bodies started to turn up, we along with everyone else presumed it was the UDA; it was only after the hits became suspiciously frequent that I began to put two and two together. It was obvious from the start, of course, that we were connected to a major operation and I smelt a rat fairly early on, I just didn't know what sort of rodent I was dealing with. They had up-to-the-minute information on people and places and weapon dumps that even those on the ground had no knowledge of. They seemed to be operating within a limitless budget and with an open mandate – it seemed to be enormous lengths to go to in terms of effort and manpower just to know who was saying what to who; but even in my most cynical moments I didn't at first guess the audacity, or criminality of the operation."

"Come off it Harry, these were men who blew up women and children without qualms, at most it could be seen as an eye for an eye and besides which they claimed to be soldiers fighting a war; taking out combatants, however you can, in war, is not a criminal act."

Harry nodded gravely

"Yes I know and I know that I always say that much of our work is in grey areas of morality, increasingly so it seems; but regardless of what the IRA claimed, they were not soldiers, they were civilians and they were civilians that 6 arranged to have taken out without trial and summarily executed and what's more executed in a brutal and cruel manner so that blame could be laid at the door of the loyalists. I've had this discussion many times, not least with Mace and it always comes down to the same line in the sand, we have to say that there are some things we do not do; for if there is not that limit, then we are no better than the people we are fighting against, no matter what our motives. That's not naivety, that's pragmatism. We have to maintain a moral high ground if there is going to be practicably anything left worth defending. Yes, I've ordered the elimination of individuals in extreme circumstances, but in response to a specific clear and present danger, not some carte blanche licence to kill within a general political objective."

Adam brought Harry gently back from his digression on moral turpitude to the information he needed.

"So what precisely did you do for 6?"

"In the end I was one of four junior staff seconded to one of what I later found out were 12 separate penetration units set up by 6, although at the time we were fed the line that we were working for a branch of special forces. There was Bill and myself and then two officers from military intelligence. Our job was to hang round in certain republican bars and be ready to liase with the undercover agents, retrieving information to pass on to our contact and likewise to pass messages from the control to the agents when necessary." Harry paused and smiled as he remembered back:

"Bill said that he couldn't think of a more perfect assignment, to be paid to sit in a bar all day and drink as many freebies as we wanted. I soon got pretty pissed off however. Bill was preoccupied with the whole Le Carre glamour of the situation and with putting his acting skills to good use in creating various disguises but I could see that we were being sent on some very dangerous reconnaissance operations with no backup. We were never told more than the bare essentials nor did we know for what end the information we passed on was intended. Suffice it to say that of the four of us who used to sit in those pubs on the Falls Road, I'm the only one who came out of those little jaunts alive."

"But surely 6 were taking a big risk that the whole operation could be blown by using inexperienced personnel for the carrier pigeon roles?"

"Well yes, but then even if we were sussed by the IRA we couldn't reveal much because we didn't know anything. I mean at that stage we didn't even know that the undercover agents were from 6, we had been fed the information that they were turned Provisionals – neat huh? – if we squealed on informers within the provisional cells it was the long term members who would be under suspicion. Likewise if we got hauled in by our own side, I mean the military or the police authorities, we were similarly clueless as to what chain of command we were serving."

"So", here Adam paused fractionally as he order in his mind now he would phrase the next question.

"If you were such a small minion in the operation and had no direct connection with the executions then what evidence do you think might now be given to support the charges?"

"What you mean is: did I actually kidnap and shoot IRA activists? No I didn't but it was done and on a large scale that has not been admitted or revealed to its true extent."

Adam narrowed his eyes and gazed back directly at Harry.

"So if your involvement was as low-level as you claim, why have you been targeted?"

"If I knew the answer to that Adam, I'd not be wasting time giving you a history lesson. Frankly, if it was one of my opponents in the Service, they have got far juicier incidents from my past to rake up – you only have to ask Juliet, she has access to enough skeletons in my cupboard to have me investigated ten times over – or they would trap me in some current imbroglio. They wouldn't reveal operations that would leave a great deal of egg on senior faces. Yet if not someone within the Service then whom? Some disgruntled fellow operative from that period, some relative of a dead agent? Honestly, I have no idea Adam. I only wish I did."

"Well, we will see what we can dig up. I'll try to make contact tomorrow. In the meantime, can you take the dog for a stroll, so that I can slip out the back?"

Harry smiled his slow crooked smile again, the one that captivated Ruth every time she caught it.

"Of course. Oh yes and tell Juliet not to shed too many tears for me when you find her snuggled up in my office tomorrow morning."

Adam held out his hand and grasped Harry's in a firm shake. His instinct was to reach out and embrace the older man. What was it about this reserved and eminently capable individual, that made those who knew him well, want to protect and cuddle him like a vulnerable child? Perhaps it was the fatherly guidance and protection that he offered to his staff that engendered the desire to express reciprocal affection and respect or perhaps as Jo had once laughingly suggested, it was his teddy-bear cuddliness that appealed to the inner child in all of them.

Harry gathered a protesting Scarlet out of her basket and clipping on her lead, strolled down the front steps of his house. Immediately the driver of the surveillance care started his engine, whilst the officer guarding the rear of the house was called to drive round and take his place. Adam smiled to himself as he sauntered down the garden path and through the gates. It would be amusing how predicable the patterns of manoeuvres were, if it were not that the security of the capital was in their hands.


	4. Chapter 4

_**THE PAST REVISITED**_

_**The Diaries**_

Ruth had driven away from her house with a pounding heart and trembling hands. God knows what Adam would say about her calling in both the police and the press to distract the Special Branch officers, when she was meant to be keeping a more than usually low profile. She could visualise the irritated expression he tended to assume when he was sufficiently annoyed to allow his bonhomie veneer to slip. She had great difficulty in transferring such imagined responses to Harry however, even though he, of the two men, was the one with the reputation for a short fuse and explosive temper. For, looking back, she realised that Harry had never expressed a negative opinion in respect of her competence: exasperation, yes, frequently, and occasionally anger at the ineptitude of others when she had been in the line of fire, but nothing that directly questioned her modus operandi. More often he was solicitous, sympathetic and supportive. How she wished he was sitting next to her at that moment. Always calm in a crisis; logical, decisive and cool-headed; nothing would frighten or rattle him – or at least that the impression he gave others. What should she do? Where should she go? Harry's whole future, even his liberty, could rest on what she did in the next few hours and what she could discover. She needed somewhere safe to store the diaries and more particularly, she needed somewhere to go where she could not be detected or disturbed, where she could read through them in peace and quiet and try and shed some light on Harry's time in Northern Ireland.

One hidey-hole immediately sprang to mind. Where else to hide a needle but in a haystack? She needed to find a library, which was little used, and preferably old-fashioned in its organisation – the last thing she wanted was for some ultra-efficient librarian to discover the hidden cache and reclassify them, or worse still, turn them into the authorities. Ruth wracked her brain for somewhere in central London that would meet her criteria. The Manuscripts Department of the British Museum was certainly disorganised enough, but it was too busy and also there was no ready access to the collection. Ruth suddenly slapped the steering wheel and smiled in triumph. Of course! The Warburg Institute library. A specialist post-graduate facility that Ruth had made extensive use of during her time at Oxford. The stacks of books were accessible and some tomes were covered with such a thick layer of dust it was unlikely they had left their shelves since the 1950's.

The first thing she had to do however was to park up her car, as it could be traced far too easily. After that she would have to find a discreet place to sit down and read through the diaries without interruption. The only places that she could think of that were open at 3 am were dodgy clubs and massage parlours or bars and casinos; none of which did she fancy nor would any provide the necessary privacy. Hotels were out of the question, as she knew only too well that the details and photographs of all guests arriving at strange hours were automatically flagged up on Special Branch computers. Then it came to her. Of course, how stupid – why hadn't she thought of it before? The perfect place. Running all night, where no one apart from the odd weirdo bothered you and you were not directly monitored as long as you knew where to sit.

Ruth parked her car in a quiet residential street off the Fulham Road and caught one of the familiar red buses that trundle through the streets of London until dawn and beyond. She made her way up to the top deck and slid into a seat at the rear, from where she could observe everyone who came up the stairs, but where she was not in the line of view of the security camera. The scenario brought back, with painful clarity, the memory of the other occasion when she had been attempting to help Harry save his career and reputation and had encountered him at the top of a London bus. Ruth stroked her fingers together as she recalled the momentary touch of their hands as she had passed him the memory stick. Harry was such a self-contained, enigmatic man; it was difficult to judge what he was thinking. She appreciated his self-control – she similarly disliked revealing her feelings and yet she longed more than anything to know what he thought and more particularly what his feelings were towards her. It has seemed in that brief exchange on the bus that Harry had hesitated, had been on the point of crossing boundaries: his hand had lingered fractionally as he had touched her fingers, his face came so close to her head as he whispered instructions to her that she could feel his breath on her skin. The electricity that was always there between them had positively sparked; certainly he had seemed to inhale her scent as his face had touched her hair. Beads of perspiration broke out on Ruth's forehead as she recalled the agony of the intense yearning; the anticipation that he would reach out and kiss her or draw her into an embrace but then he had vanished leaving her once again with a hollow desperation that blended desire and disappointment. Well that was then and this was now and she had work to do, so no more distracting trips down memory lane.

Ruth glanced quickly round the bus again to check no one was watching and drew her handbag onto her knee. Her hand hovered over the open bag whilst she hesitated and fought a mental battle with her conscience. Harry had entrusted her with his diaries – did that mean he intended her to read them or was it a sign of his confidence in her integrity? Either way, she could just about justify looking at the diary covering the period of his service in Northern Ireland, as a defendable means to an end; but what about the others? There was no justification to abuse Harry's trust and read the private diaries that did not have direct bearing on his arrest and yet the temptation was overwhelming. Ruth frowned in her effort to rein in the desire to pull out all three volumes and discover their secrets. She reasoned with herself that it was not just idle curiosity that was driving her. Here was possibly a golden opportunity to find out if her love for him was reciprocated. Indeed she might not even be mentioned at all, in which case she could stop wasting precious time speculating about the contents of the wretched things and concentrate on what she was meant to be researching. Ruth muttered to herself:

"Oh blow it. I'm meant to be a spook after all. If Harry absolutely didn't want me to read them, then he shouldn't have given them to me."

Not totally convinced by her own rationale, Ruth pulled out the three volumes of the diary from her bag sensing she was like Adam and Eve failing the test of obedience in the Garden of Eden. Hopefully the consequences of her disobedience would not be so far reaching, although she could certainly do with a helping hand from the Tree of Knowledge at the moment. The soft leather binding of the books gave no indication of which volume was which and as always seems to happen in such situations, she had to open all three before she found the volume she was looking for. The first entry was for 1 January 2002. Ruth resisted the temptation to read the diary through cover-to-cover and flicked through to the beginning of September 2003 when she had started to work in Section D. The entry that caught her eye was dated two days before she had arrived on the Grid.

2 September 2003 

_Debra Langham faxed over details of the new Intelligence Analyst – the poor woman has obviously lost the use of her legs and is unable to make it down two flights of stairs to deliver them in person. I must remember to send a sympathy card!_

_Ruth Evershed sounds very impressive on paper and is certainly a stunner, judging by the accompanying photo. Let's hope she's not a let down in reality – such a package of brains and beauty seems too good to be true._

_Tom seemed edgy again today. I wish he'd get his private life sorted out. His mind is never a hundred per cent on the job and his emotional vulnerability worries me. Successful spooks cannot afford such weaknesses._

_4 September 2003_

_Another red alert today. We seem to lurch from one crisis to another, skating on increasingly thin ice (if that's not mixing my metaphors to an unhealthy extent). The Government is going to have to approve major budgetary increases if we hope to meet current challenges._

_Ruth Evershed arrived today and will prove, I think, to be a very interesting addition to our team, although I'm not sure the others are convinced. In the flesh she is stunningly beautiful, with large pale blue grey eyes and a luminous smile and is as bonkers as they come. Impulsive, passionate, highly intelligent, chaotic with a fascinating blend of naivety and shrewd insight rounded off with a sound dollop of clumsiness and impolitic remarks – one of the first things she said was 'Bugger the Home Office' – a lady after my own heart! I think she will fit in well in this mad house. I hope we can persuade her to stay._

Ruth smiled to herself. So it had not been one-sided, those heart-stopping first impressions. She still vividly recalled their first meeting. She had been late, as always and in her embarrassment at barging into a briefing already in full flow, she had dropped files all over the floor. She had taken a few minutes to settle down, had barely registered his lame attempt at humour at her expense; but it had not taken long before she had fallen under his spell. The man exuded charisma and authority. He led his team by the force of his intellect and his tacit acknowledgement of their unerring loyalty to him. He invited opinions and open discussion, but made it clear that final decisions rested with him. Ruth had watched him, mesmerised by the sensuality of his voluptuous features and the timbre of his soft, beguiling voice. In succeeding weeks, she had come to more fully appreciate his strong sense of morality and his determination to defend and support his team. Increasingly she also realised, that a kind and sensitive soul lay hidden beneath the cool, calculating and ruthless exterior. She also found that she was becoming fixated on his physical appearance – she would find herself watching him as he spoke, her gaze drawn like a siren call inexorably to the pouting, mobile lips that seemed to caress words as they were formed, before reluctantly losing them to his audience with a final soft embrace. And if she was to avoid the honey-trap of his mouth then where else was she to look as he lectured them? The eyes were just as beguiling and more dangerous to her sanity. Warm and expressive, they could flash with anger at one moment and seem to penetrate your soul at the next. Yet had she just been deluding herself when she had sensed that the attraction was not just one-sided? At what point had they become intellectually and emotionally closer, so that they formed their own 'special relationship' that made her Harry's particular confidante? At what point had feelings of regard and respect turned to something more passionate?

It was difficult to put a finger on a precise day or month, but it had gradually become evident that they shared a unique rapport and mutual respect that went beyond the customary professional relationship. When Tom was framed by Herman Joyce and appeared to have gone off the rails, it was she whom he had singled out to confide in and ask for her unwavering support. Perhaps because she was not so tied by bonds of loyalty to Tom as Danny and Zoë were but she liked to think that it was already an indication of the degree to which they had grown close. A professional intimacy that had only continued to grow in intensity as they had worked side by side over the past three years, sharing heartache and tragedies, crises and threats; but also triumphs and satisfaction in a job well done. Harry had warned Tom that spooks don't have friends in the Service, but his closeness to her made a lie of that aphorism. The question that still continued to tantalise her: what precisely did they have? – might have an answer in the pages of the book she held in trembling hands. Close friendship? – Certainly, despite what he had declared to Tom she was certain that he regarded her as a friend. Respect? Affection? – Undoubtedly; but what else? On her side she knew she was devoted to him, but he was a man who inspired devotion in all who worked closely with him. More than that then – love – the word had been hovering on the brink of her mind for as long as she could remember. An uninvited guest at the banquet that would complicate and disrupt her life and yet which increasingly she could no longer ignore.

Had his feelings likewise developed? His gentleness with her and desire for her company might suggest so, but he allowed so little of his personal feelings to show that it was difficult to tell. According to Zoë, she had only seen him openly emotional once, when she had witnessed his reunion with his daughter Catherine and he had broken down in tears. Zoë had said that those few brief moments had allowed her to forgive all subsequent lectures and imperious remarks, because it had revealed that he was a man whose heart had not been totally frozen by the job and that was a rare thing in their line of work. Ruth smiled sadly to herself as her recollections brought to mind the friends and colleagues to whom she had grown so close and who had one after another been removed: Tom, Zoë, Danny, Colin; how she wished they were still here to lend support in the current crisis. It was not to say she was not happy with the present team; indeed she was very fond of Adam with his blend of charm, humour and ruthlessness and Zaf with his infectious cheeky attitude; although the females she was less sure of. She felt a good deal older that the buoyant Jo and had an instinctive dislike of the abrasive, cynical Ros that she was trying her best to overcome – but whatever the ever-shifting nature of MI5 teams, she missed her old colleagues still: Tom's vulnerability, Danny's beauty and good nature, Zoë's sense of fair play, Colin's geeky enthusiasm – all had vanished as if they had never existed, but she continued to mourn them silently.

Throughout all the comings and goings, the crises and the deaths, Harry had been the one constant rock in her life – in the lives of all the team. Unwavering, protective, a hundred per cent committed to his work – but how committed to her personally? Ruth resumed her self-appointed task of trying to find out what other nuggets of information on his perspective on their relationship might be revealed in the diary. The entries for the following few months regularly mentioned her contribution to briefings but yielded no further revealing remarks until she got up to the entries that covered the crisis of Tom's disgrace in July of 2004:

7 July 2004 

_I am finding this whole Tom business difficult to deal with. My instinct is that he would not betray the Service or his country for money; but my head is telling me something else. The very best can go wrong and usually in the most spectacular manner. Ruth, bless her, remains faithful to him, whatever the evidence, but then she has a kind and generous heart even if she is a touch naïve. I cannot afford to be that forgiving or optimistic however. Tom's defection has left us wide open to attack and no matter how damaging to team morale, we've got to close ranks and put him out of our thoughts. I keep telling officers that we cannot afford to develop friendships in this profession – I just wish I could take my own advice and act on it._

_9 July 2004_

_A telex from the States confirmed that Tom's whole story about trailing Zucharis was a fabrication – his body was found in a storm drain in Florida. Ruth was greatly amused by his alias 'shark' which I thought was surprisingly flippant of her, given the gravity of the situation, although it might just have been her way of dealing with the tension and she is certainly beguiling when she smiles_

_I felt the burden of responsibility more onerously than usual. The evidence seemed to prove all that I feared about Tom and I am going to have to bring him in. I asked Ruth out to the bench by the Thames for a confidential discussion. I don't know why (or perhaps I don't want to admit to myself why!) – I just needed someone I could trust implicitly to talk over what has to be done. As expected, she is still loyal to Tom and believes in him, but she also agreed that she would support me in whatever I have to do. Why do I feel the need to open up to her when secrecy and caution are the key to success in this job? Perhaps I am becoming soft in my old age or perhaps like some medieval mystery play, I see her as the living embodiment of my conscience. Certainly I felt reassured by her pledge of loyalty._

_17 July 2004_

_I'm writing this with my arm in a sling, so hence the more-than-usually wobbly script. It's been a very eventful few days._

_The crisis over Tom Quinn's defection escalated when we received a telephone call from him from a cottage in Suffolk. Cornering a spook is never a wise thing to do, but I really didn't expect that he would actually pull the trigger of the shotgun he was pointing at me. Personal vanity, I suppose – presuming as a father-figure to Tom that he wouldn't take it that far, but then in his situation I would have done the same. I was rather hoping at my time of life to have gone beyond dodging bullets, although of course in this instance it wasn't dodged –another scar to add to the collection._

_I don't remember much of the immediate aftermath other than feeling pain and disorientation and then waking up in a hospital bed wired up to a roomful of bleeping machines. It seemed like an ideal opportunity to rest and take stock of what has happened. A distraught Zoe rang me shortly after I came round from the anaesthetic and told me that Tom had swum out to sea near Orford and has apparently drowned which I find hard to believe._

_There was a guard put outside my door which should have set alarm bells ringing, but I was too befuddled by morphine to concentrate. I was soon brought out of my euphoric state by a note smuggled in by Ruth – we'll make a proper spook of her yet._

_So my removal from active duty, combined with Tom's betrayal has signalled a rotting carcass to the hyenas of Whitehall. I had to crawl out of my hospital bed and face down a very cock-a-hoop Oliver Mace to avert an immediate take-over of the department, but I'm hanging on by my fingernails. There are conspiracies afoot in dark corridors to dismantle the department and as usual I appear to be the only one willing to carry the light in a naughty world. Mace has obviously allowed narrow ambition to cloud his judgement, but I'll be damned if I'll allow his Machiavellian machinations to triumph – if he wants to crucify me he'd better make damn sure he's got big enough nails!_

_Ruth's just barged in and insisted I stop writing and get some rest. I was certainly taken by surprise in the initiative she showed in making contact with me in the hospital. She has always been such a deferential, hesitant person on the Grid, I would never have marked her out as having potential as a field officer. Apparently she assumed the legend of being my pregnant lover – now that really would be food for the Thames House gossips if it were true!! In fact I must stop fantasising about such a scenario as it's ruining my concentration and of course any personal relationship between us would be out of the question. How many such liaisons have I seen end disastrously in the past? Besides which I'm sure she doesn't really think of me in that way._

_Tom had better come back from the dead pretty damn quick if we are going to salvage this situation. I hope for all our sakes that somehow he's bloody innocent or I'll be taking a golden handshake sooner than I expected._

_20 July 2004_

_So Tom is innocent after all. The body left at our front door is Herman Joyce – so dead men do rise from the dead it seems, after all. Quite a stylish, if over-dramatic, calling card of Tom's. I'm ignoring the 'I told you so' gleam of triumph in Ruth's eye. This development will, I think, save us, but we're not out of the woods yet. Drafting in Adam Carter from 6 was a good move. He's living up to his reputation – unorthodox and fearless, but I sense quite a deal of resentment amongst Tom's old team – tough! – divided loyalty is an occupational hazard in our profession._

_I hope this crisis will resolve itself soon and I can get Oliver Mace off my back (an unfortunate phrase that brings hideous images unwillingly to mind!!). My shoulder is slow to heal and I am living off a diet of painkillers, whisky and caffeine which cannot be doing my liver any good. Ruth has been bossing me around and bringing in fruit concoctions, pulses and organic salads that would make a rabbit blanch. I caught her checking my bin to make sure I hadn't disposed of them on the quiet – she missed her vocation , she should have been a prison warden! Still, even when she is at her most irritating my anger is only subterfuge. She smiled at me today when she caught me watching her – I'm behaving like a love-sick teenager and this has got to stop before I make a complete fool of myself in front of both her and the rest of my team and as the saying goes there's no fool like an old fool._

"You're not old and you're certainly not a fool" murmured Ruth to herself. By now she was so engrossed in the diary and in re-living those months of operations when she and Harry had been in daily contact, but before the tension of repressed desire had put up barriers between them, that half of the JIC could have been sitting on the bus with her and she would not have noticed. Ruth greedily resumed her reading and a few pages on this entry sprang to her notice:

_2 June 2005_

_I could have strangled Ruth today and kissed her at the same time!_

_We're under a great deal of pressure at the moment trying to get to the bottom of a sordid and possibly serious conspiracy involving a mercenary by the name of Morgan and then in addition, I am landed with a command from on high that I must apply for the vacancy of DG as the present idiot is standing down 'for personal reasons'!! I'm both flattered and irritated by the prospect. I'm not a politician and I suspect that that's what they will be after. Also I don't want to become any more desk-bound than I am already. I joined the Service to make a difference and I'm good at what I do. I flatter myself that my team performs well under my tutorage and in the present security climate we need every Section to be operating at maximum efficiency. It's easier for them to find another sycophantic opportunist to replace the one they've already got who will lick politicians bottoms and say the right thing at the right time, than to find another Section Head. Still my friends keep chastising me that I should have more ambition and climb further up the greasy pole, so maybe I should take this more seriously. At the very least I don't want to make a fool of myself, so I asked Ruth to put me through my paces, in terms of likely questions at the interview stage. _

_A curious request I know, to ask a junior officer, but there is no one whose intellect I respect more Despite her shy manner and eccentric behaviour, Ruth has a razor-sharp mind and won't be fobbed off with vague platitudes. I realised the full extent of what she is capable of one minute into the grilling she gave me – after that experience the actual interview will be a walk in the park. I felt like a worm on a dissecting table – the more I squirmed and avoided the questions, the more she tore me apart. I was left looking silly and tongue-tied, like some junior minister after a lively session with Paxman and I just wanted to shut her up. On the other hand, I was very grateful for the opportunity to practice my routine and shore up the weak spots of my argument. At my request she finally took pity on me and stopped the bombardment. I was amused by the circumspect questions that followed. It's obvious that she doesn't want me to leave the department, which is flattering, or perhaps doesn't want me to leave her personally, which excites me more than it should. "Will you forget us once you are pacing the thickly carpeted floor of your new office?" – so she has noticed my habit of pacing when I'm thinking, perhaps she surreptitiously watches me as much as I watch her? – I would like to think so._

_Postscript: Evil corporations defeated, all's right with the world – well at least for the next few hours hopefully._

_I didn't get the DG job – I'm both relieved and disappointed – well, even if you don't want something, it's a natural dog-in-the-manger response to be offended that they didn't think you the best man for the post. I told my confidante. She pointed out the hypocrisy of my disappointment, but the expression on her face suggested she was even more relieved than I was by the outcome. _

_Is this love or just an office infatuation? Either way, it's dangerous ground. I should steer clear, but I think it's already too late for such advice. If the situation was reversed and Ruth had been promoted out of the Section, I know I would feel bereft. People joke about me, as they used to about Clive McTaggert, that I am married to the Service – well that maybe so, but I still have the need for human companionship and feel physical desire._

'_Be still my beating heart'! – better to carry on as we are. I might find the situation tantalising, but it's more prudent than an open declaration._

Ruth made a rapid calculation in her head. June 2005, that was more than a year ago and yet Harry had not made any direct approach to her before his unexpected invitation to dinner a few weeks earlier. All that time he had been struggling with his feelings, as she had with hers. She blushed to think of her efforts to find a distraction in chasing that poor man John Fortescue and then almost getting herself killed by Andrew Forrestal. Why the hell hadn't Harry said something? The answer of course, was that he didn't feel able to proposition a junior officer any more than she felt she could proposition her boss without sounding cheap and without risking being moved out of the department. 'Idiots the pair of us!' she thought ruefully. So what then had brought about the change of heart more recently, that she had detected in his more suggestive overtures?" Ruth skipped over the entries for the following few months until the name Angela Wells sprang out from the page. She speed read through Harry's description of how Angela took them hostage on the Grid and demanded evidence that there had been an MI5 conspiracy to assassinate Princess Diana and then read more carefully the section that described Harry's decision to use her relationship with her step-brother to put Angela under pressure. She still remember the shock and sexual tension between them when he had flung her against the wall of the corridor and challenged her to accept and glory in her triumph of having destroyed another human being in order to save her colleagues, maybe here she would find an answer.


	5. Chapter 5

**THE PAST REVISITED**

_**Chapter 5**_

_……… We had to find a way out of the impasse and our options were limited. I knew all along what the key would be – I was just hoping that I wouldn't have to use it. Ruth had run away with her step-brother to Blackpool when she was eighteen; ostensibly to escape from a difficult situation at home, but the whole 'affair' was ambiguous and the unanswered question as to whether their relationship was purely platonic could be a means of penetrating Angela's defences. Angela was, after all, clearly obsessed with him and holding the entire team to ransom on the premise that she wanted his name cleared from accusations of incompetence - by us providing the proof Princess Diana conspiracy actually happened - and to think I once held that woman in high regard! Our options of trying to either trick her into submission or tunnelling our way out of the Grid both failed miserably and I was left with no option. I hated doing this to Ruth, but despite the wounded look in her eyes, I had to hold firm and insist that she utilise her past history to try and force Angela to give in. Not surprisingly, she was very reluctant to do as I asked and also angry – whether at me, for probing into her personal file, or at what was asked of her,I'm not sure. I'm frustrated with myself, for letting my personal feelings get in the way of my job to such an extent – my hesitation in using the information in my possession was purely motivated by concern that Ruth would hate me for it. This is why you should not allow yourself to become emotionally attached to your colleagues in our line of work, it inevitably clouds your judgement and can put lives at unnecessary risk . The only way to be able to operate effectively is to be impartial and detached. Some days I wake up and tell myself that I've just got to put her out of my mind – it usually works for about 45 minutes: the time it takes me to walk or drive from home and catch sight of her as I enter the office!_

_It might seem a rather crass move, to suggest to Angela that the love of her life had actually been in love with his sister all along; but jealousy makes irrational beings of the best of us and without intending to sound sexist, I have always found that this line of approach: creating legends that sound as though they have come off the pages of romantic fiction; seem to be surprisingly effective with the female sex._

_Although initially reluctant, Ruth did a magnificent job of destroying the raison d'etre of Angela's grievance. I knew she would. Despite her soft-heartedness and mild manner, Ruth has more determination and steel in her character than many of the most experienced field officers I have worked with._

_After Angela had surrendered and, through our misplaced sense of Spook loyalty, allowed to leave, I caught Ruth in the corridor. She was alarmingly angry at what she had had to do. She finds it hard to come to terms with the moral ambivalence demanded of us in this job and to be fair, as a desk spook, she is not involved at the coal-face of such operations very often. I tried to reassure her that she had done a good job and should be proud of her abilities and indeed I was so aroused by her impassioned attack, that I grabbed her by the shoulders and flung her against the wall. I don't remember exactly what I said to her, only the sensation of actually holding her close to me and of my brain chanting 'kiss her, kiss her'. Her lips were only inches from mine – full, pouting, inviting – how I let her go and walked away, I still don't know. Even as I moved down the corridor my stomach was churning and I am ashamed to say that I was sexually aroused by the whole experience – thoroughly reprehensible behaviour from someone in my position, but I couldn't help it nor, if I'm honest would I have undone that moment of physical intimacy with it's frisson of sexual promise._

_It seems ridiculous and juvenile to record all these personal sensations in a journal that is essentially a record of my professional life and I shall certainly edit them out in the expurgated copy I leave in my safety deposit box for posterity; but for my own benefit in the future, I want a record of how I felt about Ruth. So for my future, older self, reading this, please note: I realised at that moment in the corridor that this intense, physical and emotional desire I feel for her threatens to transcend all consideration of professional duty or personal caution. I love Ruth Evershed, body and soul and if I never touch her again, she had been the greatest love of my life. I would like to think that we could have a life together, that we could sit at quiet cafes discussing the finer points of Persian poetry, that we could make love in joy and tranquillity. I yearn for hope of a life beyond this barren existence but I know the reality is that nothing will happen._

**"_Love – What is love? A great and aching heart,_**

_**Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair.**_

_**Life – what is life? Upon a moorland bare**_

_**To see love coming and see love depart."**_

_Our faith in the brotherhood of Spooks was proved once more to be ill-placed – we should never have let that bloody woman leave Thames House. Angela Wells had set up the whole scene on the Grid as an elaborate subterfuge to gain access to our inner sanctum and plant the impression that she was setting us up in order to attack the Royal Family in Buckingham Palace. We, of course, predictably, sent the members of the family to the safety of their underground shelter and played right into Angela's hands as she had been working there for months. turning the whole facility into a giant booby –trap. Thanks to the quick-witted reactions of the team, a disaster was averted. My reaction was a blend of fury and grudging admiration for the sophistication of her sting – she was playing us all and still remained several steps ahead of us, even after her plan was thwarted. I should have reminded myself of Shakespeare's advice on the danger of women scorned, but I didn't and as a consequence Adam is now in intensive care fighting for his life, with a bullet wound he took in the chest as he was trying to protect me. Angela had taken up a sniper position opposite the side entrance to Thames House and waited for her prey to return to their lair. God alone knows why she didn't pick me off as well, before she launched herself into the hereafter. I pray that Adam makes it through. He's a very able officer and a good friend (given of course that we don't make friends as I keep telling everyone!!) and that little boy just cannot lose another parent._

_Poor Ruth was as white as a sheet when I got back to the Grid from the hospital. Apparently no one was sure whether I had suffered the same fate as Adam. I think the whole situation has probably brought back unfortunate memories of the showdown with Tom, but I'm afraid that danger is part and parcel of this job and not just for field officers. I rather cruelly took comfort in the emotions she was trying, not very successfully, to suppress – if my feelings are reciprocated it doesn't make the situation any easier, but it's reassuring to know that the special ties I sense between us are real and not imagined._

Ruth sat very still in her seat, tears coursing down her cheeks; her mutterings reaching bag-lady proportions:

"You stupid, stupid man. How could you go on day after day feeling like this and not say anything? Couldn't you see I feel the same way? No of course you couldn't. I was bottling it up as much as you. Both of us equally blind. Well, I might have betrayed confidentiality but at least I've discovered how you feel Harry."

This revelation of the intensity of his feelings for her shed new light on the gesture he had made at her last birthday. It had become a customary practice between them to leave a gift hidden somewhere on the Grid for each other's birthday, a practice that had been first initiated by Harry, much to her considerable surprise. At first she had presumed that it was a kind gesture of appreciation between a thoughtful boss and his junior officers and she had been quite taken aback to discover, after a discreet enquiry, that she, in fact, was the only one that he had singled out in this way. Nothing was ever directly referred to between them and no acknowledgement of the gift made beyond a discreet smile of thanks. The hiding place was usually indicated by a trail of coded messages, sometimes written and sometimes casually dropped into conversation or even briefings. Last April, a series of particularly obscure and oblique references to change and a need for liquid refreshment made by Harry in the morning briefing, had led her, after several false starts, to a rare copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses secreted behind the water cooler. Harry was beginning to take risks. A present left in a desk drawer or in her coat pocket was one thing; leaving anything, even as small as that slim volume, behind the water cooler, that hotbed of gossip and intrigue, was asking for trouble. Also, it had seemed quite a curious choice – classical yes and certainly eloquent, but Ovid was also quite racy. So, not as blatant as serving up a copy of Aristophanes, but still suggestive in its descriptions of sexual desire and congress. Ruth recalled the blush that had suffused her cheeks when she had finally managed to sneak to the water cooler, in a rare moment that the area was deserted, open the discreet wrapping and read the title of the book. The blush that had deepened when she became aware of him watching her, not from behind the glass of his office, but only feet away from her and the same blush that had assumed feverish proportions when Harry had reached down to help himself to a cup of water and murmured softly

_**"the god was all on fire, his whole heart was aflame, and he nourished his fruitless love on hope. He eyed her hair as it hung carelessly about her neck … he looked at her eyes sparkling bright as stars, he looked at her lips, and wanted to do more than look at them. He praised her fingers, her hands and arms … her hidden charms he imagined lovelier still."**_

She had stood rooted to the spot, mesmerised by the sonority of his voice quoting from Ovid and taken aback by his temerity. All she had managed by way of reply was to whisper in a strangulated voice

"I don't think I'd be much use to you transformed into a tree."

Harry had chuckled and murmured the reply

"At least you wouldn't be able to run away as easily."

Ruth had scurried back to her desk and avoided direct eye contact with him for the rest of the day. He for his part made no further reference to her birthday, or his present to her, or indeed his intrusion into their pact of silence by quoting the unrequited passion of Phoebus for Daphne and he declined the invitation to join the team for a celebratory drink for Ruth's birthday at the George. She had, despite her embarrassment at his earlier overtures, been disappointed when he bade them goodnight and disappeared in his car. She had returned home about 11 pm and had been disturbed to see a faint light emitting from the inside of her house, even though she could have sworn she had turned off all the lights that morning. She had reached for her pepper spray and cautiously entered the house. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed – the scrap of paper in the door was still exactly as she had left it and her new alarm was still activated. Ruth had breathed a sigh of relief and gone through into the kitchen only to find two red candles burning in fretted brass candle-holders on the table, in front of a large vase of blood-red peonies. She knew instantly who was responsible and why he had not joined them in the pub. As if the identity of her mystery visitor had been in any doubt, lying on the table was a card of a Renaissance painting that depicted Daphne metamorphosing into a tree. She had looked around carefully to make sure this time that she was not being watched, before she allowed herself to open the card and read the verses that were written inside, in Harry's neat script:

_**"Oh come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise**_

_**To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;**_

_**One thing is certain, and the rest is Lies;**_

_**The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.**_

_**Ah Love! Could thou and I with Fate conspire**_

_**To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,**_

_**Would we not shatter it to bits – and then**_

_**Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire."**_

Ruth's heart had continued to beat fast, long after the threat of an intruder had gone. It was not even so much the escalation of thought and deed on Harry's part that was setting her head spinning, as much as the care and thought that he had put into sourcing and presenting his gifts to her. He was a frantically busy man with the cares of the world on his shoulders, who nonetheless, must have spent considerable time and effort to make this gesture. This was not just some jack-the-lad trying to make a good impression. Harry had gone out of his way to find things that he knew she would like and would subtlety indicate common interests and, dare she hope, perhaps a depth of regard for her that she had thought lay solely in her imagination. Not an open declaration of course, that was not Harry's way; but surely an indirect acknowledgement of their special connection.

Neither of course made any direct reference to the flowers or the verse or indeed the copy of Ovid that now held pride of place on her bedroom table; although, whilst Jo, who had questioned Ruth the next morning about what she had done after the pub was perplexed by Ruth's reply that she had had a Milk Tray moment and gone to bed, someone on the Grid picked up the inference. The only sign that Harry had overheard this snippet was a momentary hesitation as he opened the door to his office and the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth that vanished almost as soon as it had appeared. So neither had breached their tacit agreement to maintain silence; although Ruth had longed to acknowledge her appreciation of the care he had taken and the sentiments he had expressed, but over the weeks following her birthday, the glances between them had been consistently more lingering and intense. At one particularly monotonous briefing by Colin on the niceties of internet security, Harry had become exasperated and cut across him:

"I once read that we should aim to leave the Wise to talk but I'm afraid that your time is up Colin ". The others had nodded in agreement, but failed to notice that Ruth had blushed and glanced up at Harry who had met her gaze with a soft expression in his eyes and the ghost of a smile lingering at the corners of his mouth.

A jolt, as the bus bounced over yet another temporary road surface; brought Ruth sharply back to the reality of her present situation. She closed the diary she had been reading with lingering regret. Hopefully her future lay in the promise hidden in its pages, but for now she had to focus on the present and on finding more information about Harry's involvement in Northern Ireland. In any case the revelations of the most recent diary threw up as many dilemmas as it suggested resolutions. What should she do about her new-found knowledge? March into Harry's house and declare that she had firm evidence about his desire and he should stop pussy-footing around, admit how he felt and take her to bed and shag her senseless? Somehow, she didn't think so. Firstly, he might be genuinely outraged that she had read his private diaries. Secondly, he might still not be willing to act on his feelings and bringing the situation to a head might actually destroy the tentative understanding they already had and thirdly she adored him absolutely, without question; but she still felt a slight deference towards him and she couldn't see herself actually taking such a pro-active role as to start propositioning him outright. On the other hand, could she stand months more of the exquisite torture of will-he, won't-he (touch me, kiss me, tell me he loves me etc etc) – well at least she had an answer to that. Knowing now for certain what she had only previously suspected, she could and would play a waiting game, for as long as necessary. The question was no longer 'is this burning obsession I feel in any way returned?'; but rather 'will we at some stage have the courage to overcome natural reticence and sense of professional expediency and move forward in our relationship?' It might seem like only a modest gain to an outside observer, but to Ruth, the shift of emphasis, was crucial. Knowing Harry really loved her was enough, or rather, it could be enough, if anything more was not achievable.

Ruth slipped the precious volume back into her bag and checking the other two volumes, kept the earliest diary out and placed the second one back where it had come from. She opened the diary and was immediately struck by the youthful handwriting that was achingly familiar and yet at the same time curiously childlike compared to the sparse, neat script she was used to deciphering on a daily basis. A quick scan through the opening pages made her smile – a rather self-justifying and self-conscious preamble, that rationalised why people kept diaries in the first place and on what basis he had decided to join them. He had only been twenty-three when he started it – a whole lifetime ago – young, confident and achingly handsome (she'd accessed photographs of him in military uniform from that time!) – she had wondered then as she did now, out of idle curiosity, whether they would have hit it off then if the twenty-one year old intense Oxford graduate had met the outgoing charismatic officer? Possibly not. At that age you rarely have time to look beyond immediate impressions – maybe he would have found her an academic prig whilst she might have found him egotistical and overbearing; but just maybe they would have formed the unshakeable bond of respect and affection that had cemented their relationship over the last three years. Either way she had no more time for idle speculation based on a premise that would never have happened given the seventeen year gap in their respective ages.

Ruth flicked forward until she came to the first dated entry in the diary that made reference to Northern Ireland.

_1 December 1977_

_Arrived in Belfast yesterday. It was cold and grey with a steady, soaking drizzle. I've been warned that it's like this here much of the time, so I'd better get used to it._

_Jane is still packing up the old flat and is booked on a flight in two weeks time. I can't say she's over the moon at the prospect of relocating here, but hopefully she will find a job and not have so much time to ferment resentment. As far as she is concerned she came from an army background and married, so she thought, into a familiar world, only to be enlightened subsequent to the wedding ceremony that I had changed profession. I find her attitude surprisingly old-fashioned and parochial for someone who has received a modern education at one of our most revered institutions but I'm afraid I have no intention of going back to a military posting, so she's just going to have to learn to live with it._

_This is my first serious posting since completing basic training and I'm excited to be given a proper job to do for a change. My old school friend Bill Crombie is already out her and I look forward to the opportunity to work more closely with him. The plenipotentiary at Section A is a man called Simon Cooper; who seems fairly typical of the MI5 bosses I have encountered so far – a blend of public school savoir faire with civil service prissiness and the occasional flash of intuition. I think we will muddle along well enough, although I don't think I would like to be in a situation where my life depended on him._

Ruth skimmed through the entries for the following four months, that recorded routine field work and Harry's increasing frustration that he was being confined to 'mickey-mouse' tasks. The brief mentions of Jane did bring a pang as they reminded her of Harry's past life, when he must have been happier and less lonely than he was now; although his references to his wife were curiously cold and detached. She paused after the entry for 9 March 1978, which recorded his promotion to the job of agent-handler for his section. This was what she had been hoping to find – entries that covered his activities in Belfast in 1978. She just hoped he hadn't been as circumspect in recording his operations as he was in her personal life:

"_Told Jane I would not be able to make it for the anniversary dinner she has booked for tomorrow evening. I did promise I could make it one night next week instead and she just went ballistic, quite hysterical in fact. I must admit I still continue to find women a complete mystery – what does it matter which day we celebrate our wedding anniversary? Jane is worryingly middle-class in her attitudes. Sometimes I wonder if we did the right thing, getting married so quickly or whether I did the right thing in not telling her before the wedding that I had joined the Security Services? Well it's too late for second thoughts now and she will have to understand that being married to an MI5 officer means that dinner dates have to be a moveable feast (if you excuse the exorable pun.)_

Ruth chuckled to herself and shook her head in disbelief. Harry was really a man's man, for all his appeal to the female population. He just didn't have a clue what made the opposite sex tick – he really needed to be a fly on the wall when women got together; as it was, his education was woefully incomplete. To not be able to make it for his first wedding anniversary celebration and then be genuinely mystified that Jane was angry? Was he really that obtuse or was he deliberately setting out to annoy his wife? At least the years had appeared to have taught him some experience. He could still be easily put on the back foot by the attitudes of young women: Ruth's chuckle deepened as she remembered his alarm and embarrassment at Sam bluntly referring to her PMT's; but generally, he was solicitous of the needs of his female staff and certainly as far as she was concerned he was sensitive, gentle and considerate.

Ruth refocused on the entries for late March 1978. Harry's account of the overhaul and expansion of his group of agents again seemed routine. He had set about reforming and enhancing the operation in his customary incisive and intelligent manner. A probing reader might read between the lines and question how his best friend Bill Crombie, took to Harry being suddenly promoted over him. Harry might have insisted that he was 'primus inter pares' with Bill, but it was still a humiliation for his friend. Had there been an undercurrent of discord there which affected the security of their operations together? Ruth didn't have the time to trace that particular avenue of thought. She needed concrete information: dates, names and details of operations. The key question remained: did Harry commit to paper details of clandestine ops he was undoubtedly involved in whilst in service with MI5 in Belfast and if so were any of those ops connected to the black op being run by 6? Part of her wanted to find answers that would help to fight the case against him, but part of her dreaded to discover what he had really been up to in that fateful year. The information or the lack of it would be found in the next crucial entries she was about to read.

* * *

The quotations are taken from the following poems:

1) Love What is Love? by Robert Louis Stevenson

2)Metamorphoses by Ovid (Penguin translation)

3)The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (translated by Edward Fitzgerald.)


	6. Chapter 6

**THE PAST REVISITED**

_**Chapter 6**_

_16 May 1978_

_We now have a full compliment of agents and can start to hopefully garner in some useful information. There are rumours flying around of a new, deep cover operation, being initiated from over the water; but then there is always some rumour or other making the rounds of this place. If you pay attention to all the Chinese whispers, you would think that a major operation was about to start every week. Bill's inclined to give more credence to this latest gossip, because of the new faces that have been appearing and disappearing in the department over the past few weeks; but I intend to remain sceptical. I don't want to be side-tracked from the task in hand. This is my first real opportunity to show what I can do and I don't intend to cock it up. Despite Jane's persistent negativity, I very much see my long-term career remaining within the Security Service and this is a great opportunity to showcase my abilities to the upper echelons._

_18 May 1978_

_Damn!_

_The first casualty since I assumed responsibility for this section: a new agent by the name of Tim O'Leary (actually one of Bill's recruits). He had worked down at the shipyards and then been laid off. I would like to say that we attract agents through the force of our political argument; but the fact is, that the majority put their lives at risk purely for financial reward and a pretty modest reward, at that. So then; rather like being a bona-fide officer of MI5: dangerous: dirty work for a meagre financial return! Anyway, poor Tim wasn't given any particularly high-risk assignment; he was just meant to keep his ear to the ground and report back on anything he thought might be useful. He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was a member of an extended Catholic clan that has several members interned and a history of links with Sinn Fein and the Republican movement going back three generations and so seemed to have good potential as an agent. Lord knows what he did wrong, but his body turned up in the Liffy, minus eyes, ears and tongue(removed before death according to the pathologist) – a not so subtle message to his British handlers and of course sensational enough to act as an effective warning to others who saw us as a useful source of pocket money. I arranged for the official report to record it as a suicide, which, in a way of course, it was._

_I have had a heated exchange with Bill over our future recruitment policy. It's no good just hauling in every minnow you catch with your bait and put them on the books. All we're going to do is raise the body count and fuel the Provisionals' propaganda machine. We've got to try and find those who are not only desperate or greedy enough to risk such an unpleasant demise, but also have the capacity to spy on their family and comrades with some hope of success. I have a list of twenty odd current agents in my book, but no more than eight are actually providing anything approaching high-grade information and a further half a dozen or so are likely before long to go the way of Tim O'Leary. These IRA bastards are professionals and it's no good recruiting third-rate sources to try and infiltrate their organisation, even at a peripheral level. I've suggested to Bill that we need to do some more under-cover work ourselves to try and suss out potential candidates before we commit to employing them. Bill unfortunately took most of my points as personal criticism, which was not intended, but became more positive when I raised the possibility of undercover work. It appeals to him to slap on the wig and greasepaint and get back to his thespian roots. His enthusiasm worries me a little. I remember once when we were in a school play together – he was so dazzled by being the centre of attention that he didn't look where he was going and fell off the stage – I just hope history doesn't repeat itself over here._

_10 June 1978_

_Just came back from our third successive undercover operation on the Falls Road. We've been posing as semi-skilled dock workers, returning from an extended period of employment on the mainland. This legend might make others suspicious of us, but at least it will cover up any weaknesses in our accents and more particularly, any gaps in our knowledge of local cells and their chain of command. I think we've blended in quite well. I, of course, had to have my tell-tale blond hair dyed to a more Celtic hue, which did not please Jane. I pointed out that it was only for a few weeks and it would quickly grow out; but she said that wasn't the point. My altered appearance just highlights (!!) how much of a stranger I am to her, in all sense of the word. Great. I have to concentrate all day on keeping up with Bill giving an 'Academy' performance and then I go home at night to have Jane storming at me like a drama queen. I told her that if she wanted to see me on a mortuary slab, she was going the right way about it and of course that just led to a full blown argument. At least I have the advantage that she's not talking to me at the moment and so I don't have to face justifying my movements to someone who cannot be told ninety per cent of what I do. _

_We didn't make a move to contact anyone for the first two days. We just hung around in the pub at lunch time and a couple of hours in the evening. Doug Henshaw and Philip Drake came in and greeted us as old acquaintances and then Gemma Stevens from Special Ops put on a splendid show as a hooker trying to pick us both up – I was certainly tempted and I know her 6'3" SAS husband from Sandhurst days!! At one stage there were more MI5 operatives in that bastion of Republicanism than there were genuine customers! Tonight we decided to rack up the action another notch and get chatting to a bloke who seems to have potential as an agent. His name is Jerry Hanley. He's a printer by trade, but he's been out of work for eighteen months. He's got a wife and four young children to support and from certain remarks he let skip he has contacts with the Provisionals, but a sceptical opinion of their methods and motives. So far so good. The question is always in these situations however: when is the right moment to break cover and make an open approach? If you misread the signs or get the timing wrong; not only have you blown your cover but you have put yourself in a life-threatening position. To be able to entice the potential agent to a more neutral rendez-vous, takes more time to build trust and friendship, than most scenarios allow. In the case of Jerry Hanley, he appears to have an eye for pretty women, so we could set up a honey-trap; but trying to maintain the loyalty of an agent purely through blackmail is very difficult. You have built a relationship, not based on need or mutual trust, but on suspicion and coercion; which is inherently more likely to break down. I think I'm going to risk an open approach with Hanley. He appears bright and devious, which are two essential characteristics in a successful agent and I don't want to let this one get away if I can help it._

_Meanwhile, I've put the rest of the team onto identifying those on the books who are providing misleading or useless information. They might just be the dross, but it's highly likely that they are actually double-agents and our most constructive approach is to try and turn them back. Section A will have to dig a little deeper into the kitty to fund the enhanced benefit package for our Irish Philbys – but it's still cheaper and quicker than starting from scratch and they may well provide invaluable information on the security arm of the IRA._

_16 June 1978_

_The double-agent recruitment drive is going better than I could have expected. Simon complained that I seemed to think that the Section has a limitless budget – but I'm not deterred by his penny-pinching. Does he want results or does he want to balance the books? If we can provide up-to-date and enhanced information on the activities and organisation of at least part of the Provisional's command structure, then I think it's cheap at twice the cost._

_I'm still going down to 'The Partridge' with Bill most days. There were a large group of IRA and Sinn Fein activists in there two nights ago. I recognised three or four faces from our records. Two were from, what is quaintly known as, 'the Nutting Squad' – that is, the Provisionals' internal security unit. We remained in the background chatting with the regulars. Bill cracked a particularly tasteless joke about del Monte being supplied with skinless oranges by the IRA, that went down very well and I saw one of the senior Sinn Fein members glance across at us. He's a sharp bastard by the name of Malachy Adams. I hope to God he hasn't got us on record as clearly as we've got him._

_23 June 1978_

_The causes and near consequences of my kidnapping are only now beginning to sink in. I'm still not sure whether I was recognised in the pub by Malachy Adams, or whether the 'Nutting Squad' have more comprehensive intelligence on our whole network and we were spotted by someone else. The latter possibility is of course, far more serious than the suggestion that it was just an unfortunate coincidence that gave me away. If it was a consequence of that chance sighting, then I am really angry with myself for not being more alert and taking better precautions to avoid the company of senior Provos who might be expected to have prior knowledge of the identity of British operatives. I'm just glad that Bill was not also taken – I escaped comparatively lightly, but he might not have been so fortunate._

_We will have to be far more vigorous in our counter-surveillance measures in the future, or the whole project could be put in jeopardy. As it is, we have been plunged into an immediate crisis. That sadistic bastard Patrick McCann, included five of our double-agents amongst the twenty or so he rounded up and put in line in front of me. Fortunately he only singled out one for a beating, but of course it's not going to do much for our 'recruitment drive' amongst the rank and file of the IRA. Also it has seriously compromised not only the five picked out by McCann as being potential traitors, but all of those double agents who have been successfully turned. The safe option would be to start again from scratch, but we have neither the time nor the resources for such a proposal; so instead we are just going to have to walk an even tighter rope than before._

_Standing in that room whilst those terrified men were being tortured and shot, I looked into my own soul and realised that in the case of McCann, I would be prepared to literally do anything to defeat him and his fellow terrorists. I always talk of their being a line you cannot cross – but for him and his fellow sadists, I would make an exception._

After reading those entries in the diary, Ruth more fully appreciated the ruthless steely streak in Harry that seemed to contradict his insistence on accountability and moral absolutes. As with Adam, he had experienced the extremes of terrorist depravity and reflected in his own mind-set the dilemma facing those in authority in these difficult times: there are moral absolutes that have to be adhered to by civilised men,but in some circumstances and with certain individuals, those absolutes may not be achievable. It also made sense of the reports she had received from Tom about Harry's almost pathological hatred of McCann when he had come to negotiate with them in London. Tom had realised that Harry had had good reasons to be so hostile, but perhaps had not known that Harry had actually been tortured by McCann and more tellingly, had had to stand by helplessly whilst McCann had tortured and executed others. The images Harry's descriptions brought to Ruth's mind were disturbing. Firstly, she could not bear to think of him frightened and in pain and having been so close to being shot himself. Secondly, the last sentence of the entry for 23 June kept repeating in her brain : "for him and his fellow sadists I would make an exception". So, the question was, had Harry made an exception when the opportunity arose? Had he used an involvement with Six's clandestine operation to get even with some targeted members of the 'Nutting Squad'? Ruth was not so blinded by love that she did not acknowledge that there was a dark side to Harry. Whether with sufficient provocation he could be driven to such extremes, to such illegal acts; she honestly could not be sure. Once he had tested her equivocal opinion of his character, when she had been driven by circumstantial evidence to think that he might have participated in the assassination of Princess Diana. She still recalled his dead-pan expression as he had deliberately pushed them to see the error of their own imaginings by confirming everything they accused him of - in fact it had actually been Adam who had been quicker on the uptake and realised that they were being 'had'. That episode should have reassured her that Harry kept to the right side of the line, but the circumstances in Ireland had been different, very different. He had only recently served as a soldier and had been involved in military action in Northern Ireland where lives had been taken; so would such an action out of uniform have necessarily felt so different? He was much younger, less experienced and perhaps less prone to question orders; although reflecting on Harry's mature personality, it seemed unlikely that his healthy contempt for incompetent or immoral superiors would ever have been any different. Still, the question mark still remained firmly in her mind. Driven to extremes of anger and outrage, would he have aided and abetted an operation that intended to kidnap and execute known terrorists and, if she found that that was the case, then was she prepared to bury the evidence to save him? Either way, it was no use paralysing herself with speculation at this stage, as she didn't have concrete evidence either way. Ruth picked up the diary and resumed reading.

_30 June 1978_

_Simon called me into his office this morning. There were two men seated next to him, whom he pointedly did not introduce, but who definitely seemed to be pulling his strings. If I were a betting man, I would say they originated from Vauxhall Cross; but they could equally have come from some faceless Special Ops lovechild of Whitehall and the Northern Ireland Office. Certainly they did not have the attitude or bearing of military men. The upshot of the meeting, when Simon spoke in so many riddles, he would have given the Sphinx a run for its money; is that Bill and I are to provide liaison support in some hush-hush operation that involves infiltrating the Provisional hierarchy for information gathering. I did point out to Simon that, in our own modest way, we were already attempting reconissance of the Belfast command structure through our agent network and I thought he frowned on duplication as a waste of resources. Also that I'm just about to start Bill on another covert operation; but it was made clear by our two mystery guests that this was an order that was non-negotiable._

_I wonder who these people are and what they're really up to? It's very cloak and dagger for a routine undercover operation. I suspect we are just a couple of expendable carrier pigeons. I don't flatter myself that we have been selected on any other basis. Still, it seems to be a large-scale, deep-cover operation and who knows what may come out of it?_

_We have been given very elaborate legends and are expected to live them 24/7. I can't say that Jane was exactly thrilled when I told her I would be away for an indefinite period of time, less than two weeks after coming back black and blue from the kidnapping. _

_Fortunately the extensive bruising has already faded enough to pass for the legacy of a drunken brawl; but the blond roots of my hair are showing, so I'll have to have another appointment with that cute little girl in Special Ops to darken it down again. Sometimes I will acknowledge that this is a very strange life I have decided to live._

_10 July 1978_

_There's something not right about this whole operation we're involved in, although at present I just can't quite put my finger on what it is. I just hope Simon hasn't offered us as tethered goats for Six's ambitions in Northern Ireland (for it's certainly now apparent to me that this operation is being spearheaded from Vauxhall Cross). I don't mind being sacrificed for the greater good of the greatest number, but not for the dynastic ambitions of a bunch of public school cronies with the morals of Caligula and the intelligence of his unfortunate horses!_

_There are comings and goings and whisperings; not just in our department, but through the entire Section and also at the military HQ. The jungle drums are going ten to the dozen and yet all is still speculation and rumour:_

" _Oh that a man might know_

_The end of this day's business, ere it come"_

_What exactly are these operatives up to and how many of them are there? My friend, Richard Barker over in the Force Research Unit, said they are swamped with new faces and when I went over to the command of my old unit ,which is on a tour of duty here at the moment; I am certain I saw one of the two men who were with Simon at the first meeting – what the hell is going on? Surely a covert operation on this scale, can't just be to find out what Martin McGinnis sprinkles on his cornflakes in the morning? We've got all agents reporting back directly to these men; there are God knows how many deep cover field officers working inside the organisation; we've got the SAS tracking weapon movements; we've got reports streaming in from GCHQ monitoring of sympathetic American supporters of all extremist Catholic groups as well as the usual liberal lefties in the UK – so what the hell are they trying to accomplish that is worth this outlay of manpower and resources? _

_I'm only attached to one small part of the jigsaw, but I think I'm about to have a glimpse of the bigger picture, as Simon's called me to go with him to a high security briefing in the secure bunker at Stormont. – I've been invited up to the high table: I'd better make sure my nails are clean and my shoes are polished, I know how these small details are significant to our sister service!_

_11 July 1978_

_This operation is frighteningly ambiguous – there are at least twelve separate spearhead task groups, targeting all of the known Provisional cells. Simon was positively orgasmic at being included with the big boys, although my first impressions were of one of those gathering in 'The Godfather'. All that was missing was a drive-by in a Cadillac with a sub-machine gun; although I'm sure my friend Patrick McCann would have been more than happy to oblige._

_Considering all the pomp and circumstance, we were still not much the wiser by the time we left. Each cell is to be infiltrated by between two and five officers, who will hopefully report back high-grade information, via a network of carrier pigeons such as ourselves. I did venture to enquire whether it was wise to put in multiple operatives; as the greater the number, the greater the risk of detection; but I was speedily silenced - like a child who is not allowed to challenge the wisdom of adult decisions. So, if we were not invited as part of a discussion group, then why were we there? To be held mutually accountable for whatever might go wrong? To be witnesses to decisions? I don't know and I don't like that I don't know and I don't like the idea that I am being manipulated by 6 in some grand design that is at their behest and under their control. In my head, I keep going back to the same question:__what are they really up to?_

_I may soon be able to furnish a few more answers, as I have been promoted to being a marginally more senior cog in this grand design – I am to assist one particular field officer who goes by the name of George Errington-Josse – obviously another product of a sink estate secondary modern, that 6 have promoted through the ranks!! He is to infiltrate the Belfast branch of the 'Nutting Squad' and I am to be the outside contact and messenger boy; but also on standby to provide immediate backup if things go belly-up. It does, of course mean that I risk coming across McCann, but fortunately Simon was too star struck to register the connection; whilst his Six 'handlers' were impressed by the fact that I had killed two Provos whilst making my escape in May and chose not to question to what extent I had been compromised. I relish the opportunity of a 'return match' with McCann, but at the same time, the laid back attitude of the whole operation is ringing alarm bells in my head. God forbid they would be concerned about my welfare, but what about their agents inside the organisation? This almost feels like one of those British propaganda films from the 1940's, when the stiff-upper lip RAF pilots are given details of missions they know they will not return from, but carry on as if they're off to the vicars garden party. Why set up such an elaborate penetration when they don't seem that concerned whether the sting works or not? Perhaps I'm not suited to this job after all, because the more I try and fathom it out, the less it makes sense. Hopefully I might find out more once I've gone into the field with David Niven, sorry Errington-Josse – a slip of the tongue. Anyway, lets hope for both our sakes, that Errington-Josse proves a tad less type-cast as the jolly decent English gent or we're both in for a nasty surprise._

Ruth felt her heartbeat increase as she read to the bottom of the page. So Harry had been drawn into the heart of the operation; but how far had he been directly involved in the actual execution squads? She almost dreaded what the next few pages would reveal. She was, however, to be disappointed. When she turned over the page, anticipating the next crucial entry; the only thing she found was a chronological gap. The next entry was dated 27 July 1978 and detailed the account of the kidnap of his close friend Bill Crombie by Patrick McCann. She scanned quickly through Harry's description of the traumatic events that unfolded that summer, as they waited desperately for news of Bill; only for his body to be found twelve days later, horribly mutilated and half burned. No mention at all of the special operation he and Bill were involved in. Surely there must have been some link with Bill's death and anyway, why did Harry not write down details of the clandestine op he was so curious about? It didn't make sense – unless he had been so heavily implicated in an illegal act that he didn't want to have any record kept? No, that was just jumping to conclusions. He had gone on a covert operation, maybe required to go deep undercover; of course he couldn't keep his diary up and then there was the trauma of Bill's kidnap and death and then shortly afterwards he was seconded to work for Six in Europe, he just had never got round to filling in the gaps. It would seem like a reasonable supposition if it didn't sound like clutching at straws.

Unwilling through she was to think the worst of Harry, Ruth made herself analyse the evidence before her in as detached a manner as she could muster. For whatever reasons, Harry had stopped his account of the secret operation in his diary. He had been increasingly involved in an operation organised by MI6 that identified and executed key IRA activists. Whilst presumably involved in that operation he had watched his friend denounced as a spy and be dragged out to his likely death, without lifting a finger to help him. At the time Harry had argued that it would have just led to him also being taken, but he was not a coward and he would never have put personal safety above the well-being of his friend, unless under the most severe constraints. Lastly, he was moved away from Northern Ireland, almost immediately, and seconded to work for 6 in Europe. What was the significance of all this? Did it add up to Harry having been up to his neck in the whole operation? To the extent that he could not jeopardise many more lives than just his friend's by revealing the mission and so he had been forced for the second time in as many months, to stand by and watch others being tortured and killed for a greater good. Or had he still been an innocent pawn in a game he did not fully understand, was not directly involved in and could not control? Somehow they would have to find answers to these questions if they were going to defend him, or at least find a justification to defend him and certainly either way, it seemed that the diaries didn't have any more secrets to yield up.

Ruth hastily made a note of the names, dates and meetings that were specifically mentioned in the entries she had read:

Jerry Hanley – the obvious starting point, as he had been specifically mentioned by Harry as the only surviving agent from the original group under his control. He would have to be the first line of investigation.

Doug Henshaw, Philip Drake, Gemma Stevens – all acquaintances from Section A and Special Forces who had supported the recruitment operation centred on the Partridge pub and who might shed some light on what had happened once the clandestine op of 6's had been prioritised.

Malachy Adams – he had possibly recognised Harry and triggered his kidnapping. Presuming that he was still alive, would he be able to shed any light on how far the infiltration by the field officers of 6 had been successful and what part if any he was aware that Harry had played in the whole affair? A long shot yes, but if he had recognised Harry once, maybe he also knew more of the circumstances in which Bill Crombie was seized, yet Harry was not.

George Errington-Josse – the most obvious starting point – if that indeed was his name. Had he likewise been a pawn in the bigger game or was he one of those in the driving seat? Either way he would be in a position, more than most, to reveal to what extent Harry had entered the inner circle of the operation.

Patrick McCann – Harry's nemesis. Dead of course, having been most fittingly executed by a para-military hit squad; but he might have surviving relatives who knew something. The question was whether they could be persuaded to co operate.

Ruth, of course, could not admit to the rest of the team where she had acquired her list of key contacts, so she would have to conduct most of the intelligence-gathering on her own without arousing attention – not easy, when working in a department full of spies! She looked at her watch: 3.45am. She had almost five hours to kill before the library opened. She got off the bus at the top of Green Park and walked quickly to a small underground club she know of on Piccadilly, that was open all night and would provide a safe, secure base to while away the time, until she could make her way to Russell Square and the Warburg Institute Library to hide the diaries. She sat down in a dark corner and ordered herself a single malt whiskey. It was not her drink of choice, but it was a comforting link with Harry and also she needed the burning sensation in her throat and stomach to keep her from nodding off. As the pungent woody fragrance of the spirit filled her nostrils, she closed her eyes and in her mind's eye Harry was sitting next to her, sipping the same drink from a heavy cut glass tumbler, his fingers brushing hers on the table and a slight, lopsided smile flickering at the corners of his mouth as he watched her across the table. Was such a vivid, conjuring imagination a blessing or a curse? Anyone watching across the room would have observed a small slight woman of arresting, fragile beauty, lean back against the plush sofa with her eyes closed and a bewitching smile tremble on her full, cupid's bow lips.


	7. Chapter 7

_**THE PAST REVISITED**_

_**Chapter 7**_

_**The Grid**_

Ruth arrived on the Grid at 8.15 am. Her face was drawn with fatigue and there were dark shadows under her eyes. Her obvious exhaustion did not draw undue attention, however, as the rest of the team were in a similarly sleep-deprived condition. Adam went round and whispered to each of them in turn that they would meet once the formal briefing with Juliet, who was on her way over, was finished.

Juliet settled herself at the top of the briefing table, with a focused and determined expression on her face, as she addressed the strained, mutinous faces in front of her.

"Deja-vu for us all I'm afraid, only this time it's the end of the line for Harry."

Glad to know that he has, as ever, got your unwavering support, Juliet."

"Actually, Mr Carter," snapped back Juliet with anger tightening her jaw and pinching the bridge of her nose, "I have been a loyal friend to Harry; but in our line of work…"

"Yes, yes, don't bother to trot out the usual spiel about not making friends, only colleagues you trust with your life; we've had it from Harry on a regular basis – the difference is, that he says it, but doesn't act on it."

"Well fortunately, we're obviously not going to suffer from the same blurring of the professional and the personal. Harry is finished as Head of this department and I had enough of your acting as reluctant virgin the last time I offered you his job Mr Carter, so we will be seeking a replacement from outside the department. In the meantime, you will all carry on as normal. Mr Carter, you will run the day to day business; any serious crisis and I will take over. The selection process for the candidates should hopefully be completed within a couple of weeks and then we can all move forward.."

"And that's it: 'The King is dead, long live the King'?"

"Actually, that's exactly it Mr Younis. There is no place for sentimentality in this profession."

"Aren't you confusing sentimentality with loyalty?"

Juliet turned to Ruth with a supercilious look on her face.

"Ah yes, the spaniel, I wondered when you'd start biting my ankles. No, a dog-like devotion is all very well for junior staff, but it shouldn't be allowed to cloud your judgement at a senior level."

Feeling six pairs of eyes watching her with growing hostility, Juliet moved on hastily.

"So, I think we are all quite clear on the present situation. I don't have to remind you yet again, that you are to have absolutely no contact with Harry."

Here she raised her eyebrows at Adam with a warning expression, before continuing.

"He is facing very serious charges and if any of you continue to aide and abet him, you will be putting not only your careers, but your own liberty, in jeopardy.

With that parting shot, Juliet wheeled herself out of the meeting room.

"With friends like her who needs unknown enemies," muttered Zaf

Adam broke across him

"Harry's room. Ten minutes."

As they all filed out of the briefing, Ruth smiled fondly at Adam. It had been a small, but telling gesture on his part, to refer to the empty office as 'Harry's room': as far as they were all concerned, Harry was still their boss and would remain so until no hope remained of his return.

Ten minutes later they were all squashed into Harry's office. Ros looked distinctly peeved as she tried to maintain minimal body contact with a smirking, twinkle-eyed Zaf. Adam, seated in Harry's chair, was the only one who looked at ease. Ruth preoccupied with the potential multiple strands of her investigations, remained with her back pressed against the glass. Malcolm, who obviously felt ill-at-ease to be in such close physical proximity with his colleagues, endeavoured to avoid his body rubbing against Jo as she turned anxiously to watch the activity of other officers moving around the Grid.

"Isn't this cramming together in here, going to seem very suspicious?"

"Yes, but so would us all disappearing off the Grid at the same time and this is the only place where we can be sure we won't be overheard."

Malcolm smiled as he leant support to Adam.

"Oh yes, you can be absolutely certain that we're not bugged in here.. About six years ago, Harry found that the decorators who repainted this room, had left a couple of permanent calling cards. It was Jools Siviter of course, he always liked to keep tabs on everyone in the Service. Harry went so ballistic that no one's dared try it again."

Despite the anxiety of the moment, Adam grinned broadly. He could just imagine Harry losing his temper and shouting at Jools as they squared up against each other. The forthright, forceful intelligence of Harry versus the old school cunning of Siviter. Both ruthless and able, but with very different concepts of what constituted 'acting in the best interests of the Service'.

"So, as we agreed last night, we will run parallel investigations. Top story activities will be focused on our liaison with Customs & Excise in their current project of monitoring ferry ports for increased drug running."

"And we are baby-sitting them on this, because?"

Adam gave a tight, pained smile as he prepared himself for another attack by Ros.

"Well for one, they suspect there might be a connection with middle-eastern money-laundering and for another, it gives us an area of operations that requires minimum input, at the same time as giving good cover for any trips to Europe or Ireland that are required."

"So. What happens when a real crisis occurs? We're meant to be running all over the continent looking for washed-out IRA collaborators in some spurious attempt to save our leader, at the same time as holding hands with C&E and oh yes, being available to respond to a national crisis at a moment's notice? So when do we get to wear our standard issue lycra pants over spandex tights?"

Zaf responded with lightening speed:

"Sounds like a genuine perk to me. I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

"Shut up Zaf. Hasn't anyone told you that the Neanderthal look is so last season?"

"Enough. We don't have time for petty squabbling. We will have to spread ourselves a little more thinly than usual, that's all. We have to keep the C&E operation going or Juliet will smell a rat and be down here faster than a whippet on steroids. Malcolm, you will act as our liaison for the official and clandestine ops. If anything starts to come in that looks as though it's going to be a priority then red flash everyone. You all need to be in a position to be able drop what you are doing at a moment's notice. Until we find out who is behind these charges against Harry, we don't know whether they are gunning for him personally or for the department and we cannot give, whoever it is, further ammunition to attack us.

Zaf, you and Jo will travel to Brussels and track down Jerry Hanley, under the cover of liasing with the Dutch and Belgium Customs about illegal shipments being carried in oil tankers out of the Rotterdam refineries. Malcolm, you and Ruth will make sure that any research you conduct into Harry's past is not traceable on the computer systems. I'm going to go and soft-soap Juliet, but she's not a fool. She still doesn't know the extent to which we managed to communicate with Harry the last time, but I'm sure she has her suspicions and she'll be watching us like a hawk."

Adam found his visit to Juliet was a waste of time, in terms of extracting any information regarding Harry's involvement in the executions in Northern Ireland. He hoped, however, that he might have convinced her (at least in part) that he was anxious to get her to reconsider him as a candidate for the position of Head of Section. If there was one thing Juliet could relate to, it was unscrupulous, bare-faced ambition. She had always held an equivocal view of morality when personal advancement was at stake and she tended to judge other people's actions by her own criteria. A man, troubled by loyalty to his former boss, but attracted to the opportunity for career advancement, was one she would relate to. In respect to Harry, however, if she knew anything about his involvement in MI6's clandestine op in Belfast, she wasn't letting on.

"We shared a bed for a few months Mr Carter, not a full curriculum vitae."

Adam thought it wise not to show too much interest and so he protested the team's shock and disappointment that their mentor had been so morally compromised in the past.

"It's a very naïve and unrewarding exercise to put your fellow men on a pedestal and in the case of Security Service personnel, downright foolhardy. No one in our profession can occupy the moral high ground for very long and be able to do an effective job. Even the saintly Harry Pearce has done things he would rather forget about. The difference between he and I is that I'm not a hypocrite."

Adam was tempted to reply "No, the difference is Juliet that he knows where the moral high ground is." But he held his tongue; thanked her for her time and hinted that he would be very grateful both then and in the future if she could reconsider putting his name forward to the selection panel. He wasn't sure that Juliet would fall for such a blatant feint, but then it might just work to throw her off the scent for the time being.

Meanwhile, the remainder of the team went about their dual tasks with an enthusiasm that belied the fact that most of them had not slept for 24 hours and were likely not to do so for some time. Ruth's mind was racing. How could she investigate all the names on her list, without flagging up what she was doing to either Juliet or her colleagues? She began by suggesting to Malcolm, that whilst he hunted down all archival references to the involvement of MI6 in Belfast in 1978, she would look for any records of Harry's friend Bill Crombie.

"Don't you think you should run that idea past Adam first? I mean I know we're doing this all clandestinely and ad hoc, but we still need to try and keep things co-ordinated."

"Yes, I know Malcolm, but it's not worth pestering Adam about every small detail and Crombie will probably prove to be a dead end anyway. I wouldn't normally think it was worth chasing his details up, but at the moment we have so little to go on that I thought it was worth a try."

Malcolm raised his eyebrows by way of reply with an expression of 'well don't blame me if it all goes horribly wrong' etched across his features. Ruth pursed her lips and started typing rapidly. Of course she already knew all that was relevant about Bill Crombie from Harry's diaries, but she needed a legitimate cover to start following up her list of names and one way was to 'discover' them whilst gathering intelligence on Harry's old friend.

Fortunately, the rest of the day passed without any major incident that might necessitate the team being summoned back to the Grid. At 10.30 am Zaf and Jo disappeared and armed with false ID and airline tickets provided by Malcolm, hurriedly made their way to the City Airport and flew out on an 11.45 scheduled service to Brussels. Once there, they rapidly located the last known address of Jerry Hanley, but there was no sign of him. His flat was now occupied by a Turkish family and no one had seen the quiet Irishman for at least six months. Checks with the Belgian police, on the pretext that Jerry Hanley was suspected of being involved in drug trafficking (which neatly tied in their enquiries with their top story), confirmed that he was not listed as dead or hospitalised. So the trail was cold and with it one of their best leads. Frustrated and disappointed, they caught the 4.15 flight back to London and reappeared on the Grid in time to catch Adam, who together with Ros, had experienced an equally fruitless line of enquiry at Vauxhall Cross; where understandably, no one was interested in disinterring the corpse of the Belfast operation.

Unbeknown to her colleagues, Ruth had been having a more successful afternoon. Of the MI5 officers that Harry had mentioned in his diary, she had been able to confirm that George Errington-Josse had been a genuine MI6 officer and was now retired and running a honey-farm in rural Suffolk. Doug Henshaw had died from pancreatic cancer in 2001. Gemma Stevens, as she then was, had divorced her 'action-man' husband and was now living in New South Wales with a sheep-farmer and Philip Drake was still working for the Security Services, but had moved across to GCHQ in 1992 and was now a senior advisor working three days a week at Cheltenham.

Malachy Adams had emerged unscathed from the mayhem and carnage of the Troubles and had reinvented himself as an executive advisor to MP's at Stormont and was still very active, even though he was now approaching 70 years of age. It was odd that Harry had not mentioned Malachy Adams as a possible lead, he must know of his current whereabouts and activity. Hopefully it was a sign of his blind prejudice in regard to former IRA activists rather than of a deliberate attempt to stall their enquiry.

Ruth now faced a dilemma. It was obviously an urgent priority for all these leads to be chased up, but she could neither put their names forward, nor propose a line of enquiry, without revealing the existence and content of Harry's diaries to the rest of the team. Her lame excuse of following up information on Bill Crombie might have fooled the trusting Malcolm as a raison d'etre for unearthing all the names on her list, but she was certain that it wouldn't wash with any of the others. No, there was no alternative - she would have to go and track down these leads herself. Zaf and Jo could keep working on locating Jerry Hanley, but in the meantime she could see if any of the other names thrown up in Harry's diaries, would provide useful information. Ruth decided that the best strategy was just to disappear quietly. If she told Adam she was following up leads, he would demand to know where those leads came from and would wheedle the whole truth out of her. There was no need to enlist Malcolm's help to create elaborate legends or fake ID. It wasn't as if she was going to need to be undercover. This was simply a case of finding each associate in turn and questioning them.

AT about 4.00 pm Ruth slipped on her coat and casually remarked to Malcolm

"I've got to slip home and take the cat to the vet. I'll be back about six and then I'll give you a hand with those MI6 records."

Malcolm was too busy to fully register the significance of what Ruth had said. It was only when Adam came up to him an hour later and demanded to know where Ruth was, that the penny dropped and he realised that it was actually rather odd for her to go home when they were all focused on trying to clear Harry's name.

"Well, um, she said she had to take the cat to the vet."

Adam frowned

"For goodness sake Malcolm, when did you last remember Ruth going home in the middle of the afternoon?"

"Well she is very fond of the cat."

"MALCOLM! Wake up. Ruth would walk barefoot on hot coals to clear Harry's name, she's not going to chase off to the bloody vets at a time like this."

Malcolm sprung to his feet and hurried over to Ruth's desk, where a small, folded note lay propped up against her computer screen. He unfolded it and read it out in an anxious voice:

"Don't worry about me. There are some leads I need to follow up. I'll be in touch."

Adam took the note off him and re-read it.

"Damn. What the hell is she up to? Malcolm, do you know where she might have gone?"

Malcolm shook his head emphatically.

"It's not like Ruth to be devious. What had she found out that she doesn't want to share with us? Check through her computer records and see if you can find anything."

Malcolm cleared his throat.

"Does it really matter Adam? I mean, as long as she's gone of her own free will."

Adam sighed in exasperation at Malcolm's short sighted response.

"You know Ruth's track record on active ops. I don't deny that she's bright and she certainly has sufficient skills to maintain a legend, but she's not experienced in field work and I don't think she's capable of picking up on warning signs or responding to the unexpected."

"Well, we don't know that she's intending to carry out investigations under cover."

"And we don't know that she isn't. Just imagine the scenario where something happens to her and we have to inform Harry that we let her disappear and did nothing to track her down."

Malcolm, looking panic-stricken, nodded hurriedly.

"I'll get onto it at once."

"Fine, and try to make sure that you make a more convincing case for her absence from the Grid than she did herself. The last thing I need is for Juliet to get wind that Ruth has gone awol.

**_Harry's House_**

Oh for God's sake hurry up Harry, I thought prisoners were meant to try and escape, not lock themselves in."

Harry wrenched open the door and stood looking down quizzically at Juliet. He wore a short-sleeved shirt open at the neck, coupled with a pair of dark cords. Despite the urgency of the moment, Juliet could not help but find herself still attracted to him.

"My God, I don't think I've ever seen you out of a suit; well, other than in Berlin and Damascus, obviously."

"Juliet. I don't suppose you've come to discuss my sartorial choices, nor for that matter, to take a trip down memory lane; so why exactly are you here?

"Are you going to help me in or are we going to sit here bandying words in full view of Special Branch?"

Harry frowned and widened the door to allow her room to manoeuvre the wheelchair through into his kitchen. Juliet turned to face him.

"I'll cut to the chase Harry. I've been informed that the evidence against you is watertight and that a prosecution will be brought."

Harry sighed impatiently and started pacing up and down in front of her.

"It's ridiculous Juliet. It's a set-up and you know it. Who's behind all this? That's what I want to know?"

"I'm sorry. I haven't been able to discover where the evidence originated but the Government feels ..."

Harry interrupted her with a raised, angry voice.

"Government? WHO precisely? Government? It's a meaningless, collective noun covering a whole pantheon of political sins. Who in the Government? A minister? A spin doctor? A civil servant? Some faceless quango run by God knows whom? Who wants me out or the department emasculated that much, that they're willing to open up such a nasty smelling can of worms?"

"Don't shout at me Harry. I'm trying to help you. You've got to accept that you're not going to win this one. Go quietly. Take early retirement and 'll see what I can do to bury these charges."

Harry leaned towards Juliet, his face by now white with anger, as his clenched fist banged on the table.

"Like you buried Clive McTaggert? You go back and report to the DG, the Attorney General, the Home Secretary and God Almighty if needs be, that I am not prepared to take early retirement, that I did not, I repeat DID NOT, execute activists in Northern Ireland, nor am I prepared to allow the waters to close over my head without a fight. Now if you'll excuse me I have paperwork to catch up on."

Juliet sighed and frowned.

"Don't say I didn't warn you Harry. If you don't want the past to jeopardise your future, you need to stop tilting at windmills and face the reality of your situation."

Harry held open the door for her,

"Thank you Juliet, as always, your advice and support is duly noted. Goodbye."

Harry closed and re-bolted the back door and leant against it sighing heavily. Juliet had not even questioned him about his activities in Northern Ireland. As far as she was concerned, the coup against him was a fait accompli. Well not as long as he had breath in his body. Although he acknowledged that that too might be up for debate in the minds of his opponents.

Barely ten minutes after Juliet had wheeled herself down the garden path, Harry heard a brief, quiet sound emanating from his downstairs toilet. Mindful of the ever present danger of someone coming to silence him permanently, he reached for a gun he kept in the coal scuttle (if he ever got back to his desk at Thames House, he was going to bollocks Special Branch for their ineffectual search methods) and edged towards the hallway. A low voice greeted him.

"I really don't fancy having to take that away from you."

"Adam. Hell's teeth, it's beginning to resemble Piccadilly Circus in here, I've only just got rid of Juliet."

"Yes I know. I saw her leave."

"Are you point scoring with Special Branch, or is there something specific you want?"

"We need to talk."

"Ok, lets adjourn to the bathroom again – I'm not squashing in the downstairs lavatory with you for any lengthy tete-a-tete."

The two men retreated once more to the security of Harry's discreet, traditional bathroom.

"What's so urgent that you need to break in here for the second time today?"

Adam frowned.

"Things are not going well. Malcolm picked up a communiqué that the Attorney General has sanctioned charges to be brought against you, possibly as early as tomorrow morning."

"Well, it was only a matter of time before the next phase of the sting would be acted on. What else?"

"Zaf couldn't find any trace of Jerry Hanley in Brussels. He was living at the Rue del la Fayette up to fourteen months ago and working as a clerk for one of the banks in the commercial quarter and then he just disappeared. There's no record of him in Belgium or the UK or Ireland. No record of him travelling out of the EEC, no record of any unidentified bodies matching his description."

Harry frowned.

"Damn. Well he can't have just vanished. Get Ruth to run a face match with Interpol and the Northern Ireland Office."

Adam hesitated whether or not to give Harry the next item of information, but decided that he wasn't going to make more of it than necessary by lying.

"Er, well, that's the other bad news I'm afraid." Adam paused, still unsure as to whether it was wise to carry on, until Harry impatiently cut across his thoughts:

"What!"

Ruth's disappeared."

"WHAT!"

"Well, what I mean is that we're not sure of her exact whereabouts at the moment. She left a note saying that she had some leads to follow up, so I'm sure there's nothing to worry about, she'll be back tomorrow. In the meantime Malcolm is checking her intelligence records to see what she was researching, just as a precaution."

Harry sat on the edge of the bath: anger flashing through narrowed eyes, lips pursed, fists clenched. Adam steeled himself for the breaking of the storm, but then unexpectedly it passed.

" Don't worry. I'm sure Ruth will turn up in her own good time. As regards the enquiries thanks for all your efforts but there doesn't appear to be much more that can be done unless Jerry Hanley can be located. He was my only reliable lead, unless you think that Oliver Mace would like to testify as a character witness on my behalf.? You need to focus on doing all you can to secure the department. It may not just be me who is the target."

"And that's it? You're just going to roll over and let them arrest you?"

Adam shook his head in disbelief, whilst Harry patted him reassuringly on the shoulder.

"Don't worry. Things will – what do you always say?"

"Crinkle out?"

Harry smiled wryly

"Yes. That's it. Crinkle out. Now clear off before our Special Branch colleagues realise the head count in here has increased."

Adam drove home, supervised a bath and hair wash for Wes, checked on his homework and had him very efficiently in bed by 9.00 pm. All the while, the meeting with Harry kept his thoughts preoccupied. It just wasn't like Harry; such a measured, calm response to the news that Jerry Hanley could not be found and that Ruth had gone awol. He had expected fireworks: anger, frustration, shouting and pacing. What was Harry playing at? Whatever it was, he was not taking Adam into his confidence. Great. Harry's life and career were on the line and he was deciding to fly solo. Well not if Adam could help it.

Three hours later Adam was still brooding on the sofa, when his mobile rang.

"Hello, Mr Carter. It's Harry, he's vanished. The stupid idiot has broken house arrest and disappeared. There's no helping him now. His actions have branded him guilty and I for one, am washing my hands of him and I suggest you do likewise, if you don't want to be dragged down with him."

"Thank you Juliet, I'll bear that in mind."

Adam was less stunned by the news than he should have been. He'd known in his heart of hearts that letting Harry know about Ruth's disappearance would act as a catalyst to the older man.

"Do the finest of Special Branch know how he managed to slip their surveillance?"

"Don't be absurd Adam. You know Harry. He could give Houdini a run for his money if sufficiently motivated. So other than guilt, why do you think he's done a bunk?"

"You tell me Juliet. Perhaps it has something to do with him being a sitting duck in that house and not wanting to end up with a plastic bag over his head."

As he said that, a light came on in Adam's head.

"Sly old fox" he breathed.

"Pardon?"

"I said, he's a sly old fox to still be able to slip past five of Special Branch's finest, whatever you say."

"Well I haven't rung you up to found the Harry Pearce Appreciation Society. You've got to find him before this all blows up in our faces."

"Your face, Juliet. I'm just a humble junior in the department. I seem to remember you telling me to leave Harry alone. I've done just what I was told and now look what's happened."

"Hmm, well, that would be a first Mr Carter, you actually following orders and if you think I'm falling for your protestations of innocence, then you're sorely mistaken. Anyway, I have no intention of being implicated by Harry's activities past or present. You are to find him and bring him back for trial. Is that clearly understood?"

"Oh yes Juliet, loud and clear. You intend to leave Harry to be crucified by whichever interested party is behind this witch hunt and damn the consequences for either him or the department. Just be sure that it's Pontius Pilate you're emulating and not Lady Macbeth."

"Don't try lecturing me from the moral high ground Mr Carter, it doesn't suit you. Leave that to Harry, if you manage to track him down before someone else does."

With that final warning Juliet Shaw terminated their conversation.

Adam texted the other members of the team and dropped the phone back into his jacket pocket. He was certain his hunch was right. If Harry had been as big a risk taker as Clive McTaggert and kept private diaries during his time in the Service, then when a crisis loomed, who was there whom Harry could confide in? Who was there on the Grid that he would trust implicitly with his most important secrets? So, Ruth had disappeared for one of two reasons, or possibly both: either she had gone to hide the diaries (if they existed) somewhere secure, or she had found some additional information relating to Harry's time in Northern Ireland and had decided to follow it up. Why had she not confided to the team what she knew? Stupid question of course. Harry would have trusted her with any such document, for the simple reason that she was unwavering in her loyalty to him and very discreet. She would sooner risk her own welfare, than compromise him. This of course gave renewed urgency to their quest to locate her and now also Harry. The prospect of Ruth confronting seasoned IRA terrorists was only marginally less frightening than the prospect of what Harry would be prepared to do to defend her. For Adam was sure that Harry knew where Ruth had gone and had high-tailed after her. Without turning the whole operation into a Keystone cops car chase, he saw no option than that they would have to also track down their boss and his analyst and preferably before they put themselves in mortal danger. At least this time they would have the official backing of Juliet, the drawback would be that they would once again have to maintain parallel operations, for the last thing he wanted was to actually let Juliet or her contacts in the Service know where Harry was; well at least not until the whole matter was resolved.- one way or another.


	8. Chapter 8

**THE PAST REVISITED**

**CHAPTER 8**

At home, Ruth hastily flung together enough clothes and toiletries to last her a few days and left a note for her neighbour to feed the cats. She paused before her desk, hesitating whether or not to leave any letters in case something happened and she didn't come back. In the end, caution got the better of superstition and she sat down and hastily wrote out an explanatory note to Adam; outlining where she had gone and asking him to forward a letter to Harry that was already written and secreted in a locked drawer. She appreciated that any note left on her desk would be immediately opened, once the others realised that she had disappeared and came to check her house; so she addressed the letter to Adam at his home address and posted it in the post-box at the end of the road. With a second-class stamp it would take a minimum of two days and probably three or four, before it arrived; by which time she would either have finished her enquiries and returned to London, or be undercover sufficiently as not to be immediately traceable.

Suddenly Ruth felt very alone and frightened. Why was she trying to solve the whole investigation single-handed? Of course she know the answer, so it was rather a pointless exercise to pose the question in the first place. A more relevant exercise would be to consider what would happen if her enquiries did not yield any significant new information about Harry's past? If they didn't come up with evidence to refute the charges against him, then what was going to happen? A trial? A lengthy prison sentence? Or even worse, some anonymous bullet or Harry found hanging in his cell in mysterious circumstances? Ruth forced down the blind panic that was threatening to paralyse her thoughts. Now was not the time for useless speculation. She had to concentrate on getting to all the individuals on her list as quickly as possible.

She would start with Errington-Josse. She could reach his house in two hours. Hopefully she could make it to Leamington Spa later that evening and catch Philip Drake at home. She prayed that he would be too exhausted after a day with the mathematicians and odd bods of GCHQ, to want any social activity beyond sinking into his sofa in front of the TV.

Having negotiated the endless sets of traffic lights and stop-start traffic that crawled past the increasingly ethnic suburbs of north London: Art Deco blocks of flats interspersed with rundown Victorian terraces and greengrocers displaying their exotic wares across pavements thronged with disparate and diverse races and cultures; Ruth eventually reached the north circular and made her way more quickly round to the A12. The journey to Ipswich was fast and scarcely had she finished a daydream in which she and Harry were walking barefoot along a deserted beach, then she found she had reached the outskirts of the city and needed to strike cross-country towards the sleepy Suffolk village that was her destination. Errington-Josse lived in an unbelievably quaint cottage down a winding lane. An English idyll, capturing an Edwardian image of our heritage that could have leapt straight out of a Rupert Brooke poem or a bitter-sweet novel by E M Forster. It was as far away from Errington-Josse's experiences in the Service as it was possible to imagine; or at least that is what the polite, stooped figure informed Ruth when he answered her firm knock at his front door.

"Please do come in Miss?"

"Er, Evershed."

"I presume that's an alias?"

Ruth smiled her assent.

Warning her to mind her step on the uneven flagstones, George Errington-Josse led Ruth into a low-ceilinged room with a log fire burning in a picturesque inglenook fireplace that cast shadows on the uneven wattle and daub walls and the faded chintz furniture.

"I'm afraid these days I'm not very well stocked to entertain visitors. Can I offer you a G&T or perhaps a cup of tea?"

"Oh, a cup of tea please, if it's not too much trouble."

When they had dispensed with formal pleasantries and had settled down with their respective china mugs; a set of pale, intelligent eyes focused on Ruth.

"Now, what can I do to help you?"

"I'm here semi-officially; that is, I've come on my own and my enquiries are at this point covert, but it's as part of a clandestine investigation by the whole department."

"So, private, but not private; secret, but not secret. In other words, a routine MI5 investigation."

Ruth smiled.

"Yes but there are more enemies within than there used to be."

"Oh, there were always enemies within, even at the beginning; especially in the 70's."

"Well, yes, actually that's what I've come to talk to you about. Your time in Northern Ireland. When you were working with Harry Pearce in Section A and specifically the clandestine MI6 op."

Errington-Josse leant back in his chair and tapped his long, lean fingers together.

"So, unless you're ghosting Harry's autobiography; why are you suddenly interested in his time in Northern Ireland?"

Ruth hesitated to disclose confidential information; but then reasoned with herself that if Harry was brought to trial, it would be in the public domain soon enough and looking at this shrewd, reserved man; she knew that honestly was the only currency that was likely to buy the information she needed.

"There is a conspiracy against Harry, or against the department through Harry; we're not sure at the moment. Charges have been brought against him that he participated in the execution of activists in 1978. He's under house arrest and unless we can find irrefutable evidence to discredit the accusations then he will go to prison or even worse."

"Who's behind the coup?"

Ruth stared straight back at her inquisitor: luminous pale blue meeting eyes of a sharper hue with a more hawk-like expression.

"We don't know. Plenty of theories of course – if you're looking for someone to stab you in the back in the corridors of power, you're spoilt for choice; but at the moment we're flying blind on this one. So any information you can provide will be invaluable."

"Poor Harry. He should give up the whole shebang and buy some bee hives. You realise after a time that the drain on your resources and quality of life is just not worth the sacrifice. The Romans had the right idea: fight the good fight on the floor of the Senate or on the battlefield and then retire to a secluded old age in the countryside, write philosophical treatise and keep bees: _beatus ille qui procul negotiis …paterna rura bobus exercet suis" (Horace: happy he who, far removed from business … tills with his own oxen the fields that were his fathers)_

"I seem to recall that a significant number didn't make it down the Appian Way without a sword between their ribs: _si vis pacem, para bellum." (if you would have peace, be ready for war.)_

"Ah, a fellow classicist. I often wonder whether there would be less trouble in the world if Horace and Seneca were compulsory reading. Any way, back to Harry. I don't know how much I can help you, but I'll tell you what I know. By the way, before I start. I'm just mildly curious as to how you came across my name?"

The tone was deceptively casual, but Ruth picked up on the alert, hooded expression in the old operative's eyes.

"Harry gave me an old address book for safe keeping. The entries are chronological rather than alphabetical; yours appeared in the list for 1978 and when I cross-referenced you on file, I found that you had been working for MI6 at the time and had been in Northern Ireland in the summer of 1978. So I thought you might be able to fill in some of the blanks."

The expression in the hawk eyes softened slightly; so obviously her half-true explanation had been sufficiently plausible to allay his suspicions.

"Well I don't know how what I know will help and certainly I can't collaborate it with actual evidence, nor do I have any intention of giving any actual testimony. I don't want to sound unhelpful, but out of sight is out of mind and that's how I like it. I don't want some over-zealous cleaning squad sent from 6 to silence me. I like my vertebrae arranged just the way they are at present."

"You don't have a very high opinion of your former colleagues."

Errington-Josse raised one eyebrow sardonically and his eyes almost seemed to twinkle.

"On the contrary, I have a highly evolved opinion of what they are capable of. Anyway, let's dispense with the ribaldry. As you have surmised, I was sent over to Northern Ireland in the late spring of 1978 as part of a large team assembled to spearhead a significant infiltration of the Provisional command structure. What you have to understand, is that none of us knew the whole truth about what was being planned. Field officers were just fed the top story. In fact we weren't even sure of the scale of the whole operation as it was run as independent cells rather like the resistance fighters of the Second World War. You can't betray what you don't know; I believe Al Qaeda are run along similar lines. So, anyway, I was aware that I was part of something large-scale, but I didn't know how many there were in total or who the officers in the other cells were and certainly I didn't know the actual objective. At least, not in the beginning."

"Would you have agreed to go if you had known?"

"Oh, I think so, yes. I was very ambitious and also trained to be detached and objective about 'taking out threats' where necessary; but I do think I would have perhaps been more vulnerable to blowing my cover if I had been worrying about having to carry out executions, so, ironically, the deception actually put me at lesser rather than greater risk."

"So at what point were you made aware of what the real objectives were?"

"Oh not until we had been established in our undercover roles. In fact, not until a couple of days before. I remember we were called to a meeting at a secret location and our targets were only then identified and we were given instructions that they were to be taken, preferably by deception and if not, then by force, to a prearranged meeting point, where they would be handed over to a Special Services Squad. It was fairly obvious then what was going to happen to them."

"It didn't trouble you, I mean morally speaking?"

Errington-Josse paused to consider her question.

"Well, to be honest with you, no. As I already said, we were trained to consider expediency to be our moral yardstick. My main concern was that we would also be taken out for reasons of security. It was apparent that this was a very covert, strictly need-to-know operation. It seemed an obvious option to cover their tracks by silencing all those who had been involved. At the time I reasoned that it would not have been in 6's interest to take out so many expensively trained and able operatives, but I still think that it was a well-founded anxiety. Certainly if the operation had not been so successful we might well have been wiped out in the ensuing whitewash. I hold no illusions about that.

Ruth tried to make her voice sound as disingenuous as possible with her next question.

"So, how did Harry come to know you at that time?"

"Well, to begin with; everyone in the Service knew Harry Pearce, at least socially. It was a much smaller organisation in those days and certainly there was more mixing between the different branches. Even if it had not been the case, Harry was someone that you would remember. Strikingly handsome as I recall; bright, frighteningly well read and very charming if he wanted to be, but a ruthless bastard underneath. Has he changed much?"

"Er, no. That's still a pretty accurate description."

The older man smiled with a twinkle in his eye.

"Still causing the ladies to drop like flies then?"

Ruth blushed furiously but didn't rise to the bait.

"So, did you meet Harry other than in a social capacity?"

"Oh yes, he was assigned to be my liaison officer for the undercover operation."

"A carrier pigeon?"

"Yes, but more than that. He was very cool-headed in a crisis. He gave me impartial assessments of what I should be doing. When you're deep undercover in such a high risk environment, it's easy to lose your sense of proportion. I knew Harry wouldn't let me do anything foolish to jeopardise the operation. We'd worked together a couple of years earlier, when he was still in the army and I'd been assigned to work at Catterick Barracks for a couple of weeks. Officially I was there to investigate security arrangements as there had been munitions going awol, but the real objective was to identify potential recruits for the Service. It took Harry two days to suss out who I was, why I was there and who I was appraising. Not surprisingly after that, he was top of my list. Then in Belfast, when I was given a choice of who I wanted to watch my back, I didn't hesitate. So there we were, he and I, two pawns in an overweeningly ambitious project, trying to do our bit and if possible, keep from ending up an assortment of body parts being pieced together in the local mortuary."

"At what stage did you find out that the operation involved the kidnap and execution of IRA activists?"

Errington-Josse shifted in his seat and narrowed his eyes.

"You certainly believe in getting to the nub of the issue Ms Evershed. I'll be equally frank. I'd been undercover for about three weeks, when I got a call to a pre-arranged rendezvous point near the docks. Nothing was spelt out, even then. I was just handed written instructions and told to read them, indicate I understood their contents and then watch them being burnt in front of me. It reminded me of the pirates handing out the black spot in Treasure Island. I was to identify the individual I considered the most crucial link in the chain of command in the cell I had infiltrated, lure him away on the pretext of identifying an informer to an agreed meeting place where I would be met by several other operatives and I was to then pull out of the cell."

"Did you know that your target was to be killed and his death made to look like a sectarian execution?"

"It was clear to me that he was going to be liquidated, yes. The part about the sectarian style executions, only became apparent when reports of three bodies being found in a ditch in Armagh came through at HQ. I recognised my target as one of them."

"Was Harry one of the operatives you met with at the rendezvous?"

Errington-Josse paused to consider his answer.

"There were three of them. They wore balaclavas, so it is difficult to be certain, but I don't think Harry was one of them. They were a different build to him."

"Was he, to your knowledge, involved in any of the executions?"

Another pause.

"I don't know. I don't think so. We never spoke about the executions, any of us. It was top secret and I think we were all shit scared that if we were seen to be unreliable, we would be permanently silenced. Would they have used MI5 personnel for the most sensitive past of the operation? Possible of course; it was a very large operation, it must have stretched resources to the limit, but given interdepartmental rivalry, it would not have been a first choice by any means. If you're asking me, was he capable of carrying out such an operation if he felt it was expedient and useful in the war against the IRA? Oh yes, certainly."

"Who from that time might be able to give me a definitive answer?"

Errington-Josse shrugged his shoulders.

"Maybe someone from higher up the MI6 hierarchy, but I can't see them being willing to provide evidence to absolve Harry Pearce – he's not exactly their pin-up of choice at Vauxhall Bridge. Erm, maybe someone from the IRA cell, but they'd probably know less than me; besides which a significant number of the section I infiltrated are no longer alive."

Ruth sensed that it would not be constructive to probe any further. Either Errington-Josse didn't know or didn't want to reveal any more about what he knew of Harry's complicity in the MI6 operation. She smiled at the older man and extended her hand.

"Well thank you very much for all your help."

Errington-Josse shook her hand warmly in response.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be of more use. You do realise that it's very likely you will not find what you're looking for?"

Ruth smiled tersely.

"I have to. It's more than the fate of one person at stake. Without Harry at the helm, the whole department is vulnerable to attack."

"Is it wise to place so much faith in one man?"

"Rationally no; but the reality is, that at this present moment in time, Harry is not simply a figurehead, he is seen almost as a talisman by both his team and his enemies alike."

Errington-Josse watched her with obvious amusement.

"Loyalty to the point of hero-worship. I have to admire Harry's skills of leadership."

Ruth blushed at the implication she was besotted with her boss and replied in a low, even voice.

"Aptitude and integrity are a rare combination in our line of work, so yes, we do value and respect Harry greatly; but this crisis, as I say, is as much to do with ensuring the survival of the department as with his personal salvation."

Ruth decided to skip dinner until later that evening, as she had no time to spare if she was going to make it back around the M25 and West towards Leamington Spa in time to talk to Philip Drake and still make it to Holyhead in time to catch the last ferry. Unfortunately, the tarmac nightmare that is the M25, had other ideas. The traffic avoidance of Ruth's Satellite Navigation warned her that there were at least three blockages between her and the M4 turnoff. All were at a standstill and several miles in length. Ruth swore and banged her hands against the steering wheel in frustration. Even if she turned off and tried to make it cross-country, she could not hope to reach Leamington before 7 pm. Ruth calculated it was at least another two hours to Holyhead and the last ferry left at 10.30 pm. It didn't take a mathematical genius to work out that she did not have time to visit Drake and still make it across the Irish Sea by morning. Either she would have to leave Leamington until another time or stay overnight and catch a morning ferry. Ruth turned the car North at the next available exit. She could not risk her colleagues tracking her down before she had reached Belfast. Locating the surviving members of the Irish cell had to be her priority. If Errington-Josse had not been able or willing to provide definitive information as to Harry's involvement in the executions, then it was unlikely that Philip Drake would shed any more light on the operation. Far better to try a fresh tack and approach it from witnesses from within the ranks of the Provisional IRA; provided of course that any could be located and persuaded to talk.

Ruth made relatively quick progress through the patchwork of small towns and winding lanes that constitute the leafy suburbs of Hertfordshire and she soon found herself joining the trundling articulated lorries from Eastern Europe that formed a nose-to-tail stream of traffic up the crowded M1. Her mind filled with imagined conversations with Malachy Adams. Ruth was shaken out of her reverie by the Satellite Navigation instructing her to turn off and head West. So much was riding on this next encounter. If she couldn't find concrete proof of Harry's innocence then at the very least he would face a prison sentence and at worst, possible execution. Ruth's mind was preoccupied with two main trains of thought: namely, how was she going to track down the former IRA members who would have known Harry from the 70's and secondly, how was she going to get them to agree to help a former enemy?

At 9.45 pm Ruth raced through the deserted forlorn streets of Holyhead only to fume with frustration for ten minutes as she queued for the ticket booth at the ferry port. Having also negotiated a truculant customs official she finally pulled up in the holding bay for the 10.30 ferry to Belfast at 10.10. Ironically, after her frantic drive to make the boat on time, she had been informed that in fact the departure had been put back to 11.00pm and she actually had time to spare. Ruth did not relish the prospect of freezing in the car for an hour and so she got out and made her way across to the main building, pulling her coat more tightly round her body as the biting wind blew through her thin top and chilled her to the bone. She was too distracted by wisps of hair being whipped across her face to notice a stocky figure step back into the shadows as she struggled to open the door against the force of the wind.

Harry smiled as he watched Ruth struggle to extract money from her bag to pay for coffee: a weird and wonderful assortment of papers and folders, items of makeup and numerous old bus tickets were strewn across the counter before a purse was finally located. His eyes continued to rest on her slight, hunched figure, as she sat on one of the hard utilitarian chairs and attempted to warm her hands around the cardboard cup. He frowned as a tall youth with a rucksack sat down next to Ruth and engaged her in conversation. Harry fought the urge to make his presence known, dispatch the interloper and propose that they investigate his past together.. His escape from house arrest would be known by now and a full alert out to track him down. He had to maintain a low profile and he certainly didn't want to place Ruth in any more danger than she was already. In his mind's eye, however, Harry entered the lobby, crossed over to Ruth's table, kissed her soft chilled lips and pulled her close to his body inside his cashmere coat. He closed his eyes briefly as sensations of love and desire made his heart palpitate and his stomach constrict. He shook himself impatiently. Now was not the time to give into emotion. Too much was at stake for both of them. He had to stay alert and focused. Regretfully Harry turned his back on Ruth, whose face wore a warm smile as she talked to the student, but whose eyes remained strained and haunted.

At 10.40 pm Ruth emerged from the bright light of the main building and shivering at the renewed icy blasts that blew straight off the North Sea, she scurried quickly back to her car and sat hunched over the steering wheel, blowing warm air onto her frozen fingers and waiting for the call to embark onto the ferry.

The crossing was choppy, but given the wind speed, not unduly so. Ruth felt queasy as she stared out of the rain-lashed window into the black, inky darkness beyond. The ferry was surprisingly full for a mid-week night crossing. Mostly red-faced, bulging-stomached, lorry drivers, tucking into nauseatingly large helpings of greasy fried egg and chips topped off with tepid half-congealed beans. The ubiquitous bistro culture that seemed to have so comprehensively hijacked cross-channel transport along the south coast, did not seem to have extended this far westward. Ruth played distractedly with an anaemic pasta salad that lay sweating and defeated in it's plastic packaging. If she had believed in an omnipotent God, she would have prayed that he keep Harry safe until she could finish her mission. As it was, she had to content herself with the less reassuring prospect of hoping fervently that nothing would happen to him in the next 24 hours. Would she have been reassured or even more worried to learn that Harry had actually absconded from his detention, was being urgently sought by shadowy, but powerful enemies intent on silencing him permanently and was at that precise moment lying down 50 feet away from where she sat; having availed himself of the keys to the Pursers Office.

Ruth curled her feet up on the uncomfortable seating, closed her eyes and dozed fitfully as the boat ploughed it's way towards Belfast. She was rudely awakened by the loudspeaker announcing that they would be docking in ten minutes and that all drivers should return to their vehicles. She groaned and rubbing her stiff neck, gathered her coat and bag and made her way down clanging metal steps into the hold that hummed and vibrated with the noise of engines. Meanwhile, Harry, less stiff and more refreshed than Ruth, slipped unobserved out of the Purser's Office and made his way to the bland, middle-management car he had hired in the name of Malcolm Carter. Not the most novel pseudonym, but then, he hadn't had time to be more imaginative and in any case he was aiming to be as bland and nondescript as he could manage. He had delayed boarding the ferry, so that his car was at a distance from Ruth's, but just to be safe, he occupied himself in repacking his leather holdall at the rear of the car, hidden by the bootlid, until the front row of cars started to move down the ramp.

Harry didn't need to follow Ruth too closely, because he thought he had a good idea where she was going. Thus, it was only his experienced sixth sense that saved him from missing her turn into a Service station and park in a secluded area away from the bright lights of the main building. It was 3.30 am. She had obviously decided it was far too late to book into a motel without attracting attention and intended to pass the hours till daylight sleeping in the car. Harry was worried for her. Ruth was resourceful and determined, but not very practical. He was sure she wouldn't have brought enough warm clothes or blankets to survive temperatures that were hovering around 1 degree C. He murmured to himself:

"Sweetheart, you're going to freeze."

As if in answer to his solicitation, Ruth got out of her car and went round to the boot to rummage in her bag for extra layers of clothes. She pulled on an alpaca jumper, a woolly hat, two scarves and armed with a small tartan fleece blanket that came free with the last fill-up of fuel, she returned to the driver's seat, locked herself in and then tried to get comfortable in the rapidly chilling car interior. Harry shook his head and sighed. More used to all-night surveillance work from his younger days, he had come better prepared than Ruth, with several thick woollen blankets, a thermos of hot tea and a silver hip flask of malt whisky. Whilst Ruth squirmed and shivered in her cramped, cold surroundings and tried to concentrate on formulating a plan of campaign for the morning; Harry kept a silent, focused vigil, his eyes never leaving the hunched, fidgeting form that could just be discerned through the windows of Ruth's car.

AT 6.00am Ruth emerged, stiff and bleary-eyed from her shelter and stowing the surplus clothes back in the boot, made her way across to the services. Harry's steady gaze followed her and he fantasised that if they both survived this crisis, he would take the first opportunity to whisk her away to somewhere sunny and warm to recuperate. Considering the furthest he had so far got with wooing her was a brief dinner for two at La Caprice, then that would be quite an escalation of their relationship. She might be willing to risk her career and even her life to save him, it didn't mean however that she was prepared to throw caution to the wind and go away with him. Visions of he and Ruth clasped in each others arms, rolling in the surf in a re-enactment of From Here to Eternity might be beguiling, but it did not mean it could became a reality. Harry's face assumed a more determined expression as he forced his mind to refocus on the day ahead. Realising that Ruth was about to emerge from the building, he hastily started the engine of his car and re-parked in a strategic position where he could easily join the slip road but where he would not be directly observed by vehicles leaving the car park.. Thus it was, that even though Ruth looked carefully and anxiously around before she drove off, she failed to notice a pair of shrewd, expressive brown eyes watching her from behind the wheel of an unprepossessing grey saloon.

* * *

_**I know it's been ages since the last update to this fic and you've probably forgotten the whole story, but please still leave a review and let me know if you'd like it to be continued (with less of a gap this time of course!)**_


	9. Chapter 9

THE PAST REVISITED

**_THE PAST REVISITED_**

**_Chapter 9_**

**_Apologies for the extremely long delay in posting this next chapter. I was concentrating on State of Emergency; but as that was also put on hold due to family commitments and spurred on by a recently left review, I thought I would catch up with what was happening to Ruth and Harry in Northern Ireland before I lost all connection with the storyline! Please don't hold my procrastination against me and leave a review! Oh yes, apologies for the bad language in this chapter, I blame too much reading of the novels of Roddy Doyle._**

**_BELFAST: 7.00 am_**

The road into the city centre soon slowed to an all-too-familiar crawl. The congestion of the roads was a sign of the conspicuous consumption that had characterised the economic renewal of the past few years in Northern Ireland. This had been fuelled in part by the success of the peace process and in part was a piggyback ride on the back of the boom enjoyed in the Irish Republic. An economic expansion that was in principle to be welcomed, but which at that precise moment: 7.02 am on a damp, bleak Tuesday morning; was finding expression in an apparently endless gridlock of bumper to bumper commuters. Ruth picked up the map she had purchased at the Service Station and looked for obvious alternative routes. There weren't any – hence the expressions of abject boredom on the faces of the drivers in adjacent cars. At this rate it would take her an hour or more to get to her destination – damn! She wanted, if possible, to catch Malachy Adams enroute to work and that meant she needed to be at his house before 8.00 am. Ruth fumed inwardly with frustration. She turned on the radio and flicked through channels until she heard the dulcet tones of a Radio Four presenter. A discussion of the latest crisis in Gaza was followed by a report on the imminent bankruptcy of Britain's pig farmers. Ruth was about to switch channels again and try and find a soothing music station when the announcer caught her attention:

"For our 'Five Minutes in the Hot Seat' slot this morning we have Sir John Pinkerton-Smith, the Home Office Co-Coordinator for the Security Services. I have got the title right haven't I, Sir Pinkerton –Smith? There has been such a proliferation of co-ordinating security bodies over the past couple of years, I'm sure our listeners are equally as confused as I am as to who does what and why."

The drawling Old Etonian cadences of Sir Pinkerton-Smith replied in a humorous but guarded tone:

"First of all, please call me John – it's far too early in the morning to stand on ceremony. As to your assertion. Yes, the on-going threat to UK security, both at home and abroad, has led the Government to appoint a series of new bodies with the aim of improving the communication and liaison between the various security services, the police and the Government. The intention is neither to add to the bureaucracy nor to confuse the public but to try and strengthen and improve the Security net around this country and its citizens.

The presenter was not to be charmed into submission so easily:

"So John, what sort of animal are you? Politician, civil servant, soldier or part of the existing Security Services?"

A fractional pause indicated Pinkerton-Smith's disapproval of being further pressed, but he tried valiantly to hide his displeasure:

"I don't think these labels are very helpful or indeed applicable in the current situation."

The presenter continued on the attack with more than a hint of sarcasm in his tone:

"So, just one big happy family. A band of brothers fighting a common enemy. All for one and one for all?"

Sir Pinkerton-Smith was clearly uncomfortable with where this line of questioning might be heading but he had little alternative than to play along unless he wanted to appear churlish or worse, a man with something to hide:

"Yes, we would like to think so."

The presenter swooped triumphantly with his coup de grace:

"So the rumour that has reached us that a senior officer of MI5 had been incriminated in a serious allegation of involvement in the systematic abuse and execution of IRA activists in Belfast in the late 1970's, but has neither been arrested or charged, would presumably support that suggestion. That in fact you're all one big happy Mafioso family covering up each other's criminality and shielding the public from the truth. Would you say that was a valid interpretation of your current mandate as Security co-ordinator?"

The ensuing silence hung with menace over the listening public as Ruth felt herself incapable of breathing as she waited for the reply. Obviously shocked and clearly rattled, Sir Pinkerton-Smith fought to keep his voice measured and calm as he replied to the accusation:

"Of course not. I have no knowledge of the accusation you have made; which is indeed a serious and I presume, unsubstantiated claim against a member of her Majesty's Security Services and I would like to make it quite clear that I am shocked that the BBC should allow itself to be hijacked by those wishing to attack the very bodies that exist to defend our nation's well being and security. First let me make the broader point, that recently there have been constant and fanciful claims of conspiracy and corruption made in the popular press, which are untrue and seriously detrimental to the efforts of the Security Forces to safeguard the British people. The Security Services have a difficult and often dangerous job to do, which is not made any easier by scurrilous lies being given credence in the popular press. It's time journalists started to exercise self-discipline and realise that we are all in this together. The only people they are serving with these sensationalised fairy stories are the enemy. The more the Security Services are denigrated in the eyes of the public, the less effectively their officers can do their job, which is only aiding and abetting terrorists."

The presenter, obviously deciding that he had given sufficient time to Pinkerton-Smith to rattle out his platitudes replied acerbically:

"So you're responding to a serious and valid allegation of corruption and possibly complicity to murder, by banging the same old drum of "for the greatest good of the greatest number?"

An exasperated Pinkerton-Smith interrupted:

"I'm not prepared to comment further on a groundless allegation made against a serving member of MI5. I'm speaking in the broader context of press harassment and negative campaigning. It's part of a more widespread malaise in our society that is leading to a breakdown in respect for authority and the rule of law."

The presenter's voice managed to sound simultaneously amused and incredulous:

"Let me get this straight Sir Pinkerton-Smith. I wouldn't want to be accused of misrepresenting a member of the great and the good of the Security Services. You are suggesting that genuine concerns about the nature of the conduct of individuals or whole areas of the Security Services should not be publicised or thrown up for public scrutiny and debate on the grounds of National security? Does that not smack of Totalitarianism? Indeed, is not the gagging of the Free Press usually the first line of attack by those attempting to suppress democracy?"

This insult was the final straw for Pinkerton-Smith who had clearly lost both his patience and his temper as he practically shouted back:

"I'm not suggesting that the press should be gagged. On the contrary, the freedom enjoyed by our media is one of our greatest achievements as a democracy. As I already said, I think that with freedom comes responsibility and that journalists and reporters need to exercise greater discretion before levelling groundless accusations at members of the Security Services, who by the nature of their work, cannot retaliate or defend themselves and that such publicity serves no useful purpose, other than to fuel wild conspiracy theories and undermine the authority and effectiveness of the institutions that exist to defend us."

The presenter, sounding smugly pleased with his handling of his guest, rounded off the broadcast:

"I'm sorry, we'll have to leave it there Sir Pinkerton-Smith, as we have run out of our allotted time; but I would like take this opportunity to invite you back to discuss these vital issues and in particular the question of the past activities of the Security Services in Northern Ireland, on another occasion."

Sir Pinkerton-Smith replied with obvious relief and thinly disguised annoyance:

"Thank you Jeremy. It's been an invigorating experience."

Ruth's heart sank as she listened to the rancorous debate. The story of Harry's involvement in the IRA executions was now, at least by implication, in the public domain. Now it would only be a matter of time before he was formally prosecuted. She was going to have to find concrete and watertight evidence if she was to have any hope of keeping him out of gaol. The question of course was: who was behind the leaking of the story? Presumably the same person or persons who had spread the rumour within the Security Services in the first place; but then they had so far been holding back from public exposure or from pushing for Harry to be formally charged – so why the change of heart? Unless a third party was involved? Ruth decided she would have to put the lid back on that particular can of worms. She had only had a couple of hours of broken sleep in a cold, uncomfortable car. She was tired and anxious and needed to expend all her available powers of concentration on finding and interrogating Malachy Adams. Not wanting to listen to more extended reporting of the plight of pig farmers in Cumbria, Ruth switched over to Radio 3 and was pleased to hear the soothing strains of a Bach Cello concerto – just what she needed: refined, beautiful and comforting to her frayed nerves.

Half a mile back in the queue, Harry was thankful that he had had the foresight to risk discovery the previous night in order to plant a tracking device on the underside of Ruth's car. It would have been all too easy to have lost sight of her in this heavy traffic and whilst he suspected that her first port of call would be Malachy Adams, he couldn't be sure and also he didn't know how or where she planned to make contact. A frown and expression of anxiety had passed fleetingly across his features as he too had listened to the Radio 4 revelations. Things were moving too fast for his liking and it was an uncomfortable feeling to be the other side of the tracks in a conspiracy that could not be controlled or its perpetrators identified and to cap it all he had Ruth's welfare to worry about. She was blundering into a situation she did not fully understand, with people who would not hesitate to kill her if they thought it expedient. Of course, he could put a stop to all this right now – overtake Ruth's car and terminate her investigations; but then there was a part of him that enjoyed watching her at work and also another which acknowledged that if he and by implication his department, was not going to be seriously compromised, then concrete evidence had to be found and that, in that respect, Ruth was correct – the evidence, if it could still be located, was in Northern Ireland and she had the advantage that she was an unknown as far as his previous contacts and associates in Belfast were concerned. Although time had, of course, filled out his features and thinned his hair over the intervening thirty years; it would be naïve to suppose that he would be recognised by the majority of his former contacts. Approached directly, they would either try to kill him or run or perhaps even have been made aware of his present situation and contact the police. Much as it worried him to expose Ruth to danger, the spook in him insisted that it was a far better strategy to leave her to make the approaches and to shadow her from a distance, whilst making sure that he was close enough to be able to leap to her defence if she was threatened in any way. Harry banged the steering wheel with frustration at his predicament and muttered to himself:

"When I catch the bastards who are behind this, I will make them pay."

Ruth breathed a sigh of relief when she was able to turn off the heavily congested arterial road and head through a succession of identikit streets, all boasting dreary brick and concrete buildings, but which unexpectedly gave way to a series of elegant squares. She slowed down and read the names written up on the side of the mellow brick walls of three successive terraces. The fourth nameplate yielded the property she was seeking. An imposing end-terrace Georgian house with imposing sash windows fronted by antique wrought-iron railings that disguised stone steps leading down to converted cellarage.

"Certainly a far cry from the Falls Road" murmured Ruth to herself as she checked the address she had scribbled on a scrap of paper stuck onto her dashboard.

"No 6, Cardogan Square. Yes, this is definitely the place."

Judging by the discreet black Mercedes parked outside the house that displayed the personalised number plate MAL 1Y, the owner of the house had not yet left for work. Ruth parked her car at the other end of the Square, where she would not immediately be spotted watching the property, but where she still had a clear sightline of the Mercedes and the front door of No.6. The obvious approach would be to walk up and knock on the door and attempt to talk to Malachy Adams in the privacy of his own home; but the likelihood was that, as a well known ex-IRA activist and current member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, he would still be under surveillance by Special Branch and the last thing she wanted was to be traced by either the Irish Special Forces or their UK counter-parts; or at least not until she had secured the irrefutable evidence she was after.

AT 8.15 am precisely, a tall thick-set man with grey curly hair and a mottled complexion, came out of the front door dressed in a dark suit and carrying an attaché case and got into the Mercedes. Ruth waited for Malachy Adams to move away from the square before she followed him. After approximately half a mile, when they were weaving through the suburban streets; Ruth availed herself of the opportunity provided by the activation of a pedestrian crossing, to bump into the rear of the Mercedes. As she anticipated, Malachy Adam's bounded out of his vehicle and seconds later his angry, flushed face appeared at the window of Ruth's car. She obligingly let down the window to hear a stream of expletives delivered in a broad nasal Belfast accent that betrayed his origins more effectively than the expensive Italian suit disguised them.

"What the F hell do you think you're doing you stupid c. Are you colour-blind? Couldn't you see the light was f red?"

Ruth replied in an apologetic and placatory voice:

"I'm terribly sorry; but really, there's no call for using such dreadful language. I'm a stranger round here. I was trying to look at the street signs and took my eye off the road. If there's any damage, I'm fully insured."

Malachy Adam's head disappeared as he went to check the rear of his car and returned almost instantaneously.

"There's a bloody dent and paint missing. I want your insurance details and your address and a contact number. This is going to be a bloody hassle. I'm a busy man. I haven't time to f around with garages."

Ruth, apologising again, reached for a pen and paper from the passenger seat and hastily scribbled out an address, telephone number and a short message, which she handed through the window.

"Here are my insurance details and my mobile number. Please ring me if you have any problems."

The man glanced down at the paper and frowned as he read what Ruth had written:

Harry Pearce Associates Ltd

Life Assurance Specialists

Thames House

The Embankment

London

EC1R 1UQ

Meet me for coffee. You suggest a time and place. We need to discuss old times.

The short message was followed by her mobile phone number. Malachy Adam's face tensed, but otherwise he gave no indication of having understood the significance of Ruth's communication.

'You must have been formidable thirty years ago' thought Ruth to herself as she returned the gaze of a pair of cold blue eyes. The man's voice was low and threatening when he spoke:

"I presume you are a fellow associate of the business?"

"Yes, but I prefer to discuss this somewhere more discreet."

"I'll consider your proposal. If I decide to take up the offer I will contact you by noon today."

Ruth tried to reassure him:

"I'm not representing a large conglomerate in this instance, just an individual case."

The man smiled back at her, which seemed disconcerting on a face whose normal expression was hooded and threatening.

"I can't say I'm not intrigued."

"I'm glad to hear that."

"I'll see what I can do. Oh yes, I will expect the damage to my car to be repaired regardless."

Ruth forced herself to smile back: "of course". Although the utterance of those two words brought painful memories flooding back of the person from whose lips that phrase so habitually fell.

Malachy Adams got back into his car and drove off without a backward glance. Ruth remained for a few minutes parked by the side of the road; her hands trembling and her stomach churning. She willed her body into driving off before she drew any attention to herself, although no one seemed aware of her existence on that busy street, apart from a pair of honey-brown eyes that watched her from the vantage point of a grey saloon car parked further down the road.

"Well done Ruth. Softly, softly." Harry murmured to himself. Suddenly a phone vibrated and rang with a muffled sound. Harry swore and fumbled in the soft folds of his cashmere coat to retrieve his mobile.

"Yes Malcolm."

"Someone broke the story to the press."

"Yes I just heard."

"Adam suspects I am in contact with you."

"No Malcolm. Adam KNOWS you are in contact. Are you going to give away my location?"

"Of course not."

"Well in that case, I suggest you get off the phone before the tap he has no doubt put on you reveals it anyway."

"No one bugs my phone."

"I wouldn't like to think my life depended on that boast."

"It has in the past."

"I suppose I should be reassured by that."

"Are you ok?"

"Just hunky dory. Stop playing mother hen Malcolm and turn the bloody phone off."

**_CAFÉ ROUGE, WILLIAM STREET, BELFAST_**

Two hours after her encounter with Malachy Adams, Ruth was sitting in front of a frothing cappuccino, fiddling nervously with the wrapping of the complimentary biscuit; when the tall figure of the self-same man cast a shadow across the table. Ruth tried to appear calm and relaxed as she gestured to him to sit down.

"Were you followed?"

"Please. I don't flatter myself that I am important enough to warrant a personal tail. Low-level monitoring, bugging my house and office, maybe; but not the full Monty of surveillance tactics. Now thirty years ago was another matter."

"Another life?"

"Certainly; but you didn't track me down to discuss my views on the Troubles."

"Not your views exactly, no; but I have come to find out about those times, or more precisely what you know about the MI6 controlled operation in the summer of 1979 which carried out assassinations of IRA activists."

Malachy Adams raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"You're very blunt young woman. The official line of the British Government is still to deny that such an operation existed. In fact, not that many people within the English Secret Services are aware that it happened, even today."

Adams leaned over the table and stared into Ruth's eyes with such intensity and malice that she shivered as if a ghost had walked over her grave.

"So how did you find out about it and what do you want from me?"

Ruth tried to stop her voice from quavering as she looked back into the cold intimidating gaze of a ruthless killer. For it was obvious to her that the man in front of her might be now in his mid sixties and a respectable member of the political establishment; but that beneath the veneer of the expensive clothes and sleek haircut he was still an out and out thug, who would break her neck without a second's hesitation. Ruth lowered her voice so that on one in the vicinity would pick up what she had to say:

"There is some sort of coup in progress in the corridors of Whitehall – why, or by who, I'm not sure. Harry Pearce has been targeted; so it could be either a personal attack on him or a move against his department. Accusations have been made that he was involved in the executions. I need hard evidence to prove that he wasn't or at least I need to find out what happened and if he was directly involved."

"Whatever gave you the idea that I would be willing to help? What makes you think that I give a flying fuck what happens to Harry Pearce or any other of the English gob shite they sent over to destroy us?"

For the second time that day Ruth attempted to pacify the incensed Irishman:

"It was a long time ago. There were dreadful atrocities on both sides. I'm not saying that you should pretend the Troubles didn't happen; but everything has changed. Look at you, look at Gerry Adams or Mick McCarthy; you're all part of the mainstream democratic political process these days. You've all moved on. You would not have helped your enemies then; but that was then and this is now."

"Still the same gob shites" muttered Adams defiantly.

Ruth continued, obstinately disregarding the brooding scowl across the man's face:

"Harry Pearce stands for decency and independence from undue political influence in the Security Services. If he falls then others will follow and MI5 will be left a mouthpiece for politicians and vulnerable to every trendy wind of change that blows through Whitehall and that will have a direct impact on you at Stormont just as much as the mainland."

"What makes you so sure Harry Pearce is such a shining light?"

"I work with him."

Malachy Adams laughed and leered at Ruth:

"Like Eva Braun worked with Hitler?"

Ruth blushed but stood her ground.

"We are work colleagues, that is all; but I have known him for several years and I would stake my life on his sense of morality."

Adams replied softly:

"You may have to do precisely that if you continue to meddle in things that people want to keep hidden. I mean, as far as I am concerned, which over-educated, poncy English toff is in charge of the Security Services at any one time doesn't interest me; they're all the same, but I don't want the British Government trying to poke it's sticky fingers any further into the affairs of Northern Ireland than it does already. So I would prefer things to stay as they are and if that means helping to save Harry Pearce's arse then so be it; but there are many who have a vested interest in keeping the past buried."

Ruth tried to further build his trust:

"I'm not trying to do an expose and if I were I'm sure the British Security Services would come out in as equally a poor light, if not worse. I just want to establish to what extent Harry was involved in the MI6 operation and find evidence to confirm it."

"And what if it proves he did execute IRA operatives in cold blood?"

Ruth replied quietly:

"Then the citadel will fall."

Malachy Adams continued to stare at Ruth as he mentally deliberated before finally declaring:

"Ok. You tell me what you know and I'll see if I can fill in the gaps; but if you expect me to provide you with a dossier of names and places, you're in for a disappointment."

Harry sat behind the wheel of his car. To the casual observer he would have appeared oblivious to the scene in the café across the road, as he ostensibly searched for an address in the A-Z of Belfast that he held open in his hands. In fact his oblique gaze remained focused on the two figures hunched in urgent discussion over the table. After twenty minutes or more, Malachy Adams got up from the table, shook hands with Ruth and emerged from the café; checking carefully in both directions before hurrying off down the road on foot. Ruth remained seated at the table in the café making hurried notes in a small jotter pad she had produced from her handbag once Adams left. Her eyebrows were knotted together in a frown of concentration as she tried to recall as many names and details as possible from the earlier conversation. It took all of Harry's resolve not to spring out of his car and join her.

After a further few minutes Ruth paid the waiter and emerged from the café. She glanced casually across the road as she waited for the traffic lights to change, but failed to observe the occupant of the nondescript grey car who was fumbling on the floor of the passenger seat apparently retrieving a packet of mints. Had she looked more closely at the steering wheel as she walked past the parked car, she might have recognised the broad hand resting on it; but Ruth was too preoccupied for such vigilance. Malachy Adams had not answered as many of her questions as she had hoped, but he had filled in some of the gaps and more importantly, he had given her the names and addresses of three surviving members of the IRA cell that Harry had infiltrated and who had worked closely with him that fateful summer.

Ruth got into her car, which was parked in a side street and drove off purposefully in the direction of the docks. After five minutes Harry started up his engine and followed her at a safe distance – the steady flash of the tracker on his Sat Nave providing a welcome reassurance that he had the situation under control and that he would not allow Ruth to endanger her life to save him. As if by sixth sense, Ruth changed tack and parking her car in a quiet run-down square of dilapidated Victorian terraces that had once had pretensions of grandeur but were now squalid, put on her coat and hurried down a side street. By the time Harry cautiously approached the location of the flashing but stationary point of the tracker he had been following, Ruth was nowhere to be seen. He parked his car abruptly and leapt out to see if he could still spot her.

"Shit, shit SHIT!"

Harry beat his fists on the roof of the hire car in anger and frustration, much to the alarm of an elderly lady who was walking her small terrier.

"Are you alright?"

"Er, Yes. Yes, thank you. I just realised I've lost something."

"Well, I hope you find it. Life's too short to spend it looking for things we've lost."

Harry smiled at her grimly:

"Sometimes it's too short not to."

He watched the woman amble slowly down the pavement out of earshot before he lifted his phone out of his coat pocket and dialled.

"Hello Malcolm. I've lost her. She's off to confront a bunch of ruthless IRA killers and she's now got no backup ….. What do you mean stop panicking? I'm not bloody panicking! Can you trace her phone? Yes, I know you don't know the number Malcolm. If I give you the co-ordinates of her last call and the approximate time can you trace her? Good, well make it sooner that that. No Malcolm, there is no point in telling Adam. What's he going to do from London time travel? Yes, yes, I'll keep the line open."

Harry got back into his car and started to cruise slowly round the labyrinth of small streets and alleyways that criss-crossed each other as the bleak urban landscape snaked down to the wavering pale blue-grey line where an unforgiving shore met an oppressive threatening sky. There was always the vain hope that he might find her by accident but he knew in his heart that they had trained her too well for that, just as he had been trained to follow her with sufficient caution that she would have been unaware of his presence so close behind her. He berated himself repeatedly: he should have realised that she would take the precaution of throwing a potential tail; even desk spooks had had a through grounding in counter surveillance. It was a costly mistake, a fundamental error that might result in Ruth paying the ultimate price. Once again in his life he had allowed his head to rule his heart; the last time in this same godforsaken city the cost had been the life of his best friend – was he destined to relive the nightmare with Ruth – once again he was reduced to praying to a God he did not believe in.


End file.
